Gabriel Kuri presents a new body of work in his first solo exhibition at the South London Gallery. The installation spans three spaces and addresses the nature of sculpture through a combination of "hard" and "soft" materials that blur distinctions between functional objects and art. References to housing, shelter, and aid are undercurrents throughout the works. In the final space, prototype voting booths emphasize separation and allude to the role of speculation in societies and economies.
Gabriel Kuri presents a new body of work in his first solo exhibition at the South London Gallery. The installation spans three spaces and addresses the nature of sculpture through a combination of "hard" and "soft" materials that blur distinctions between functional objects and art. References to housing, shelter, and aid are undercurrents throughout the works. In the final space, prototype voting booths emphasize separation and allude to the role of speculation in societies and economies.
Gabriel Kuri presents a new body of work in his first solo exhibition at the South London Gallery. The installation spans three spaces and addresses the nature of sculpture through a combination of "hard" and "soft" materials that blur distinctions between functional objects and art. References to housing, shelter, and aid are undercurrents throughout the works. In the final space, prototype voting booths emphasize separation and allude to the role of speculation in societies and economies.
Gabriel Kuri presents a new body of work in his first solo exhibition at the South London Gallery. The installation spans three spaces and addresses the nature of sculpture through a combination of "hard" and "soft" materials that blur distinctions between functional objects and art. References to housing, shelter, and aid are undercurrents throughout the works. In the final space, prototype voting booths emphasize separation and allude to the role of speculation in societies and economies.
The South London Gallery receives core funding from Arts Council England and Southwark Council and ongoing support from Helen Thorpe and Outset Contemporary Art Fund. GABRIEL KURI LIST OF WORKS BEFORE CONTINGENCY AFTER THE FACT
Internationally acclaimed Mexican artist, Gabriel Kuri, Interspersed with giant matches, dishcloths and sheets of 1. Untitled (Shelter), 2011 4. Untitled (Extra Safe), 2011 7. Untitled (Charted 10. Untitled (Shells and presents his first solo exhibition in a London public gallery cardboard, the screens create a zone of relative comfort within Mixed media Painted metal and Topography), 2011 Stubbed-out Cigarettes), 2011 with an entirely new body of work. He has devised an a bleaker landscape of funereal slabs of black marble, burnt Dimensions variable inflated condom Prototype voting table and Prototype voting table and installation in three parts, spanning the SLG’s main space, out matches and energy drinks cans squashed dry of their life 102 × 83 × 149cm mixed media mixed media Clore Studio and interlinking back garden. Primarily the work force. A bundle of clothes is poised as if in waiting for ignition, 2. Untitled (Opening), 2011 181 × 81 × 138cm 181.5 × 61 × 127.5cm addresses the nature of sculpture, the formal possibilities it a notional campfire in the making, but also anticipating a sorry Scaffold screen on wire 5. Untitled (Platform), 2011 affords and the artist’s ongoing exploration of the relationship end for items which in another life might have been objects of 500 × 443cm Glass, stone, 8. Untitled (Safe Step), 2011 11. Untitled (Booth 1), 2011 between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ materials and resources. The pieces consumer desire. In the midst of all this, the cut strips of giant, concrete, cigarettes, Prototype voting table and Prototype polling booth and in this show were also born of an exploration of ideas and burnt out credit cards could make you laugh or cry as Kuri 3. Untitled (3/4 Blue), 2011 100 × 181 × 87cm mixed media mixed media imagery associated with housing, shelter, aid and economics. ensures through his play on scale and formal relationships Painted metal and blanket 181 × 61 × 127.5cm 74 × 60 × 184.5cm Inspired in part by the SLG’s proximity to the housing estate that this dark scenario isn’t without the possibility of both 210 × 200 × 120cm 6. Untitled (100%), 2011 behind it, and the gallery’s links with the residents, the works humour and visual intrigue. Painted metal 9. Untitled (Scoop), 2011 12. Untitled (Booth 2), 2011 are underpinned by Kuri’s reflection on the role of speculation 394 × 134 × 135.5cm Painted metal Prototype polling booth in real estate. The political references in the show are notional rather than 239.5 × 140 × 100cm and mixed media literal until the third and final space which features prototype 74 × 60 × 148cm In the SLG’s main space, back garden and Clore Studio, versions of polling tables and voting booths. Division is a series of ‘hard’ sculptures – large, uniformly painted paramount once again as these simplified forms emphasise metal shapes – refer to the language of statistics or graphic the separation of individuals from each other as they play representations of data. By presenting these related forms their roles in determining the political shape of collective CLORE STUDIO in sequence, each one embodying a slightly different society. References to emergency shelters, and ultimately relationship between positive and negative space, placed survival, provide a continued undercurrent of inter-connecting 11 12 at different angles or tipped over on one side, Kuri exposes logic, and with a lightness of touch for which he has become their potential to be perceived as abstract, symbolic and/ known, Kuri brings bottles of water, used soap bars, worn door 8 10 MATSUDAIRA WING or utilitarian. The human scale of these pieces, for example, wedges and plastic sheeting into a surprising yet plausible lends them the potential to function as shelters were someone visual play with their weightier counterparts. Doubling up as 7 9 Café to lie beneath them. Whilst this might not be an immediately plinths, the tables support displays of carefully selected and FOX GARDEN obvious reading of these works, in one instance the possibility positioned items which together contribute to the dialogue Café Lift is made overt through the incorporation of two carefully folded running throughout the exhibition, and Kuri’s work more blankets. Laid out like a makeshift bed, the blankets also generally, between found versus manufactured objects. introduce a play on their use in the transport and installation Everyday and often ‘throwaway’ things are meshed with those 3 4 5 Shop of sculpture. which have been specially produced, bringing into question the value system which underpins our consumerist society. 6 2 MAIN GALLERY Entrance Kuri’s deft ability to convincingly merge totally unexpected combinations of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ materials results in works That the exhibition’s title could be repeated indefinitely – which resonate on multiple levels. While the work is about before contingency after the fact before contingency after 1 sculpture, first and foremost, the possibility of a function is the fact etc – introduces from the outset the circularity of the sometimes implied, sometimes actual, and often there is an ideas and issues it addresses, as well as the structure of the invitation for us to assign it political significance. The fusion show itself, and the relationships between the works within of a remodelled rusty skip with a pristine abstract metal form, it. Time and again Kuri draws us into various lines of thinking which might also be read as a scaled-up segment of a 3-D pie which eventually take us back to where we began, albeit via Ground floor chart, is given a further twist by the insertion of an inflated a fascinating array of possible routes. The potentially eternal condom in Untitled (Extra Safe), 2011. Wedged into an angle dialogue between form, function and materials vies with the to create an almost perfect sphere, absurd in its apparent unsolvable contradiction embodied in attempts to shape the fragility resisting the weight of the metal, the condom also future in the face of its inevitable unpredictability. suggests the critical influence of demographics in both economics and financial management. Works in the Clore Studio are viewable on Tuesdays to Shelter, 2011, makes more immediate and direct visual Fridays from 2–4.45pm, on Saturdays from 11am–6pm reference to ideas of fiscal and physical survival, and the and on Sundays from 11am–1pm. paraphernalia associated with emergency housing. Kuri is fascinated by the basic human instinct to mark out territory Supported by The Henry Moore Foundation, and delineate the boundaries of ownership, no matter Catherine Petitgas, Vicky Hughes and John A. Smith and how extreme the circumstances. Temporary homes and the Embassy of Mexico in the United Kingdom. With thanks refugee camps are invariably designed around the need to to Sadie Coles HQ, kurimanzutto, Galleria Franco Noero divide and separate, to partition one patch of land from the and Esther Schipper. next, a tendency signalled in this piece by what the artist describes as ‘privacy screens’ – fabric-covered metal frames – which can equally be understood in purely formal terms.
