Galleria Franco Noero

VIA MOTTALCIATA 10/B
10154, TORINO
ITALY

Gabriel Kuri
3.66

12 February — 21 March 2009

3.66, Gabriel Kuriʼs third solo show at Galleria Franco Noero, centers the attention on the dialectics betweeen the physical space occupied by the ʻFetta di Polentaʼ and its codification.


The title of the show makes reference to the percentage value expressed by the portion of a pie-chart corresponding to the triangular floorplan of the building housing the exhibition spaces. The artist attempts to cancel out the distance between the whole and its constituent parts, and between actual experience and its translation into coded account.


The works occupy five floors of the building fragmenting its inner volumes, and strike the observer with the immediate visual impact of their solid colours, basic precarious materials or smoothly finished surfaces. These pose a series of circular reflections of the relationship between abstract codes -as employed in economy- and the actual elements from everyday life of which they are a representation.


On the ground level, a floor to ceiling rotating slice of concrete painted in ʻpolentaʼ yellow, which reproduces the buildingʼs volume in scale, meets the spectator right at the street entrance. Rather than only dictating the way into the building, this revolving mass makes the experience of the entire space into part of its rotation.
The works that follow in the upper floors and make use of use of common place materials and objects – concrete, steel, waste bins, an umbrella, garbage bags, paint- still make reference to the idea of different graphic shapes as representations of a set of codified circumstances, events and phenomenae.


Central theme of Kuriʼs work is the relationship between time and the objects that retain its traces. This recurs in the sculptures exhibited in the project room at Piazza Santa Giulia, composed by marble slabs propped against the walls in an apparent precarious balance, contrasted by parking tickets, turn stubs, a bank note and courtesy sample products.

 

Gabriel Kuri (Mexico City, 1970) lives and works between Mexico City and Bruxelles. Among his most recent Institutional shows: ‘When things cast no shadow’, V Berlin Biennale (2008); ‘Unmonumental’, New Museum, New York; ‘Brave New Worlds’, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; ‘Expats and Clandestines’, Wiels Center for Contemporary Art, Brussels (2007); ‘Beating about the bush’, South London Gallery, London (2004), ‘Interludes’ 50° Biennale di Venezia, Venezia (2003). Among his most recent solo shows the ones at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2008); Esther Schipper, Berlin and Kurimanzutto, Mexico City (2007).

Read more