kurimanzutto

about the work:

Gabriel Kuri has been producing tapestries as part of his artistic practice since 2001. In a slow, laborious process, an ephemeral coupon, voucher or receipt is transferred into the realm of the lasting. From the numerous receipts we all accumulate and often keep folded in our pockets each day, Kuri chooses specific ones from his own experiences—those that mark particular moments, locations, or potential investments for the future—and then has them translated into hand woven wool gobelins. In the case of gain payé (2023), the artist has selected a receipt from a particular kind of Swiss lottery system, where the gamble and any resulting winnings are shared across a group of participants. The work’s title, translating to “winnings paid,” refers viewers to the stamp in the middle of the ticket and the null gains it accumulated. The original ticket was printed on a slightly glossy paper, the kind that eventually fades, taking the record of the time and place, the testimony of the bet, with it.

artist bio:

1970, Mexico City

Focusing on the objects and space that mediate human relationships, Gabriel Kuri explores the potential for transformation latent in familiar situations when observed from an unconventional angle. Playing with the principles of minimalism and the history of consumption, he integrates elements of everyday life into sculptures and collages. Residues of human interactions —plastic bags, advertising flyers, receipts, and tickets— are brought together with stones, coins, and cigarette butts, as well as industrial materials, such as cement, brushed steel, and insulation rolls. Kuri draws the viewer’s attention to the dynamic and unstable space at the intersection of two opposite concepts: in the precarious and yet precise meeting of the unexpected. The creation of systems is at the base of his artistic practice, ordering different elements until certain patterns begin to emerge and new semantic connections are generated between existing forms and their uses. Often accompanied by idioms and vernacular phrases, his pieces invite a multilayered dialogue between the verbal and the visual. He questions the given tenets of contemporary culture, through poetic juxtapositions and hybrid objects that rethink the mundane and find the eloquent and the extraordinary in daily life.

Gabriel Kuri joined Gabriel Orozco’s workshop Taller de los viernes from 1987 to 1991. In 1992, he received his BA in Visual Arts at Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (UNAM) in Mexico City. In 1995 he completed his MFA at Goldsmiths University of London. He’s been an artist in residence at Office for Contemporary Art Norway (2007), Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Zealand (2006), and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida (2002). In 2011, he was selected for an Artist Commission at The Armory Show and shortlisted for the BelgianArtPrize 2019.

Gabriel Kuri lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.