Kour Pour: Samsara

Depart Foundation, Los Angeles (US)

From the Press Release:

Depart Foundation presents “Samsara”, Kour Pour’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, curated by Nicola Ricciardi. The exhibition will coincide with Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2015.

The exhibition presents new paintings and related installation works—including a wall of seven 14-foot-tall panels flocked with golden powdered incense—that continue the artist’s recent carpet series.  In the first iteration of the series, historic examples of carpets were directly appropriated from auction and museum catalogues; in the new works the artist has created original compositions that juxtapose sets of imagery that are stripped from their own temporal context by the use of today’s technologies —Google Images, clip art CD-ROMS—and then re-contextualized on canvas through months of painstaking labor—generating a scenario that brings to mind a “networked bazaar of history and futurity.”

Just as the Sanskrit word, Samsara, has slightly different meanings in different belief systems; Pour’s work is purposely open to interpretation depending on the cultural entry point of the viewer. By sourcing material from different locations, traditions and time periods, the large canvasses, with their warp and wefts, act as nets gathering information without an apparent hierarchy. These flat surfaces contain images of hunters and gatherers, religious icons and mystical creatures, merchants, lovers and warriors. Annexing both the past and the future into the present, the paintings on display bend and blend different temporal planes and enhance non-linear narratives, highlighting Pour’s interest in the cyclic life of the material world.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a  publication, in collaboration with Nero Publishing and featuring an essay by Nicola Ricciardi.

Link to exhibition page.