Gabriel Kuri
dal 27/9/2011 al 26/11/2011
Segnalato da
27/9/2011
Gabriel Kuri
South London Gallery SLG, London
Before contingency after the fact. The work continues Kuri's exploration of the nature of sculpture, the formal possibilities it affords and the relationship between 'soft' and 'hard' materials and resources. It was also inspired by ideas and imagery associated with housing, shelter, aid and financial speculation.
Internationally acclaimed Mexican artist, Gabriel Kuri, presents his first solo exhibition in a London public gallery with an entirely new body of work. He has devised an installation in three parts, spanning the SLG’s main space, Clore Studio and interlinking back garden. Primarily the work addresses the nature of sculpture, the formal possibilities it affords and the artist’s ongoing exploration of the relationship between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ materials and resources. The pieces in this show were also born of an exploration of ideas and imagery associated with housing, shelter, aid and economics. Inspired in part by the SLG’s proximity to the housing estate behind it, and the gallery’s links with the residents, the works are underpinned by Kuri’s reflection on the relationship between real estate and speculation.
In the SLG’s main space and back garden, a series of ‘hard’ sculptures – large, uniformly painted metal shapes – refer to the language of statistics or graphic representations of data. By presenting sequences of related forms, each one embodying a slightly different relationship between positive and negative space, or with each one placed at a slightly different angle or tipped over on one side, Kuri exposes their potential to be perceived as abstract, symbolic and/or utilitarian. The human scale of the sculptures, for example, means that if placed at particular angles they could provide cover if someone were to lie beneath them.
Punctuated by the occasional insertion of ‘soft’ materials, the heavy geometric forms in the main space and garden and table-like sculptures in the Clore Studio, which in one sense function as plinths, are interspersed with objects which make more immediate and direct visual reference to paraphernalia associated with emergency housing. With a lightness of touch for which he has become known, Kuri brings bottles of water, folded blankets or linen, used soap bars, door wedges and plastic sheeting into a surprising yet convincing visual play with their weightier counterparts. References to temporary shelter, and ultimately survival, provide just one of several undercurrents of inter-connecting logic.
Another binding thread, both in this exhibition and running through Kuri’s work more generally, is the dialogue established between the found versus the manufactured object. Everyday and often ‘throwaway’ things are meshed with those which have been specially produced, bringing into question the value system which underpins our consumerist society.
Kuri is fascinated by the basic human instinct to mark out territory and delineate the boundaries of ownership, no matter how extreme the circumstances. Makeshift homes and refugee camps are invariably designed around the need to divide and separate, to partition one patch of land from the next. At the SLG Kuri highlights the demarcation between the main space and garden beyond with ropes stretched up high across the doors, both inside and out, each laden with swathes of insulated foil, polythene sheeting and scaffolding mesh. By presenting the materials of construction and building sites as if they were washing lines of clothes hanging out to dry, Kuri introduces a characteristic degree of absurdity, while also perhaps pointing to the destiny of the victims of the financial crisis. The political references running throughout the show are notional rather than literal until the third and final space which features prototype versions of polling tables and voting booths. Division is paramount once again as these simplified forms emphasise the separation of individuals from each other as they play their roles in determining the political shape of collective society.
That the exhibition’s title could be repeated indefinitely – before contingency after the fact before contingency after the fact etc – introduces from the outset the circularity of the ideas and issues it addresses, as well as the structure of the show itself, and the relationships between the works within it. Time and again Kuri draws us into various lines of thinking which eventually take us back to where we began, albeit via a fascinating array of possible routes. The potentially eternal dialogue between form, function and materials vies with the unsolvable contradiction embodied in attempts to shape the future in the face of its inevitable unpredictability.
Image: Gabriel Kuri, this, please, 2010. Photo: Polly Brade
Press view: september 28, 9.30-11am
Preview: september 28, 6.30-8.30pm
South London Gallery
65 Peckham Road - London
Gallery open Tuesday – Sunday 11am-6pm except Wednesday until 9pm. Closed Mondays.