Gabriel Kuri

Sadie Coles HQ is pleased to present Gabriel Kuri: exploding count in flattened curve in conjunction with Parley Collective on Vortic. 

Gabriel Kuri’s practice employs the use of the everyday: purchased, found and repurposed materials to investigate the relationship between rational structures and operating systems. Often linked to numerical categorisation, both in economic and hierarchical structures, Kuri filters and extracts visual and linguistic value through a process of physical and conceptual selection, with the objective of understanding the world at present. This process reflects upon what classifies ‘things’ and ‘objects’, for example; paper currencies, coin wrappers, receipts, tickets, magazine cut outs – dissecting their position within cultural, social and economic concerns, drawing attention to the acts of expenditure, consumption and the consequences of these transactions.

In exploding count in flattened curve, the works presented bring together Kuri’s methods of both material archive and formal arrangement. It is here that the rigidly objective modes of economic and social categorisation are imbued with an ambiguous set of rules, created and adopted by the artist. It is this break with ‘organised’ convention that instils a sense of precarious balance within the work, highlighting the flaws and absurdities that can be found in broader cultural and socioeconomic norms.

Gabriel Kuri (b. 1970, Mexico City) obtained a BFA in Visual Art, at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, UNAM Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, and an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London. Recent solo exhibitions include spending static to save gas, The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2020); sorted, resorted, WIELS, Brussels (2019); Product Testing Unit, Alte Fabrik, Rapperswil (2016); with personal thanks to their contractual thingness, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2014); Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen (2012); Before Contingency After the Fact, South London Gallery, London (2011); nobody needs to know the price of your saab, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2011); Blaffer Art Museum, Houston University, Houston (2010); join the dots and make a point, Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany (2010). Recent group exhibitions include Archipelago – A Problem (On Exactitude in Science), Tiön Projects, The Hague (2018); DESERT X, Palm Springs and Coachella Valley (2017); Portrait De L’artiste En Alter, FRAC – Haute-Normandie, Sotteville-lès-Rouen (2016); ICH, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt (2016); Over you / you, 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts Ljubljana, Ljubljana (2015).