Kour Pour UK, b. 1987

Kour Pour is an artist whose creative processes, source material and painting techniques stem from a wide range of cultures and histories. His experience as an immigrant and biography are the foundation of his work– Pour is of British and Iranian descent and grew up in a mixed-race household – but the artist is also newly American, having been granted citizenship during the pandemic. As a child Kour spent considerable time in his father's carpet shop, memories of which have become a central component of his practice. These cultural threads inform Pour's work and add to a wide range of visual languages, ranging from Islamic patterning to Japanese woodblock prints and Korean Minhwa folk art, that infuse his paintings and sculptures. The artist’s artwork is produced through diverse and layered approaches. Large hand-cut block prints and silkscreened images appear in many works, other paintings are rendered entirely by hand, and Pour often sands away large areas of his canvases to begin the dance again. The processes by which the paintings and sculptures are crafted are specific and intentional, tailored towards the iconographies of each piece.

The artist has quickly developed a reputation for meticulously composed and delicately rendered artworks which intersect diverse material and aesthetic traditions, allowing for a remapping of the standard understanding of Eastern and Western  cultural exchange. Fostering forms and techniques from numerous cultures and time periods, Pour’s truly global vision weaves together representational imagery, abstract patterning, and ornamental elements to create new hybrid artworks. Pour’s synthesis of image and process often connects different art histories in an attempt to highlight the cultural exchanges that lead to artistic innovation and disrupt the notion of singular originality.