An Über-Stylish LA Painter’s Favorite Cologne, Watch, and Leaf Blower

This is Men of Taste, a GQ column about stuff, as recommended by the people in our world who go to great lengths to find the best things.

“I’m a living contradiction,” contemporary artist Friedrich Kunath says, reflecting on the wild spectrum of items he holds dearest. When it comes to his stuff, the 51-year-old German-born painter resents the reality of having to own a single thing at all. He suggests that the only must-have possession he can recommend to his fellow man is the “inner freedom not to own anything.” And yet, he acknowledges the meticulously researched and highly personal nature of his own favorite things—and how integral they are to his practice.

There are the Wilson Audio Sasha speakers he treasures and uses to fill his Los Angeles studio space with the sonic wonder of Italo disco and Peso Pluma. There’s his Aston Martin Lagonda, beloved by Kunath for the innovative heel-digging it took to produce. And of course there are the scents he uses as creative stimuli, bathing each of the handful of rooms in his workspaces in fleshy, herbaceous, and potentially idea-sparking aromas.

Kunath’s oxymoronic brand of passionate nihilism has worked quite well for him. Just last winter, the artist concluded Aimless Love—his absurd, romantic, and widely praised Pace Gallery debut. The exhibition coincided with the release of Friedrich Kunath: The Grand Tour, a visual tome recounting Kunath’s oeuvre over the past quarter century.

Here, the artist waxes lyrical on tennis rackets, timepieces, and more—including his beloved leaf blower.

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My go-to pair of sunglasses:

Panthos Business. Dressing up doesn’t have anything to do with money, it’s about a cultured way of living. I think these glasses look expensive, but they’re fucking nine [euros] and I love that. Buy 10 or 5. And they look cool. It’s easy, it’s unpretentious. The guy who has the ice cream shop and the truck driver that wants to look like an Italian in a Sorrentino movie—he can get them too.