THE CLUB is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Kour Pour. On view are paintings from different series, which have been developed over the past several years.
Primarily working with painting and printmaking, the artist treats the history of painting as a framework to explore the products of cultural exchange and the possibilities for creativity and hybridization within the medium. The works encompass diverse subject matter and culturally specific references ranging from Persian miniature painting to Ukiyo-e prints, and Western Abstraction to Eastern landscape painting. These references are used as starting points for each series of paintings, often in which a source image is cropped, abstracted, or adjusted in palette to create vivid, intricate and layered painting surfaces.
For Pour, any given process is not only a means to achieving a desired surface, but also a connection to specific art making traditions. This methodology can be found in the block print paintings that stem from the artist’s investigation into Japonisme, the Japanese influence on Western art and culture. These works combine techniques and imagery used in Japanese Ukiyo-e printmaking to create larger scale paintings on canvas that resonate with Modernist art traditions of the West. Image and process are combined to draw lines to different art histories in an attempt to display the cultural exchanges that lead to artistic innovation and to disrupt the notion of singular originality.
Part a product of the artist’s multicultural biography, and part product of his interest in broader histories of migration concerning people, objects, and images; Pour’s work shares a vibrant energy through the use of rich colors, dynamic compositions and various processes.