Archive
Search
Artspeak,

Artspeak

Christian Kuras

Christian Kuras received his MFA from Concordia in 2002 and since then has had solo exhibitions at the New Gallery, Calgary; Latitude 43, Edmonton; AKA Gallery, Saskatoon; Struts Gallery, Sackville; and Forest City Gallery, London ON. His works have been exhibited across Canada and in the UK. He currently lives and works in London, UK.

Exhibitions

  • Drone

    CHRISTIAN KURAS
    April 30–June 4, 2005

    Christian Kuras is a Canadian artist living in London, UK whose work proceeds by a circularity of sorts. Reflecting a disjunctive experience of relating to the world of individuals and machines, Kuras finds interest in the paradoxical division between interior and exterior worlds. Like a membrane that contains, yet must remain porous to thrive, Kuras’ interior worlds must be permeable to communicate. Kuras’ projects often thwart communication by creating non-permeable containment: closed circuits and contained voices. The result is a frustrated presence, a circularity that must be suppressed for the illusion of forwardness to perpetuate.

    The centrepiece of Kuras’ installation is Drone, a mute anti-surround sound circle of megaphones that hang at ear level. Suggesting directional orders or commands reminiscent of protests and rallies (both on the side of protest and the side of the law), the megaphones in the work suggest the voice is an instrument of power. In configuring the megaphones in a loop, Kuras has created a closed circuit that in fact removes the voice from the equation.

    The self-contained circularity of the megaphone project works in conjunction with a photographic work of a four-armed turntable, 4 Time. By altering the functionality of the turntable Kuras examines the ramifications of the would-be indecipherable sound produced from the circuit and its altered power of multiplied but ineffectual voices. Approaching communication and control as a myth, Kuras’ works pursue an articulation of the disconnection between the closed loop of one’s own mind and how those thoughts are conveyed to an outside world.

    This exhibition is conceived of as the second in a two part series that takes the mixing of music and video as a starting point. Following the thematics of Kevin Hanley’s exhibition, Kuras manipulates visual imagery through a relationship to the treatment of sound. Hanley’s suspension of action and conflated viewpoints sets up a dialogue with Kuras’ examinations into the hearing and seeing of sound.

  • Threesixty

    KEVIN HANLEY
    March 19–April 23, 2005

    Kevin Hanley is a Los Angeles-based artist whose practice includes video, photography, performance and sound. Engaging with the slippery relationship between time, memory and reason, Hanley is best known for structural studies in which he eliminates linear narrative. His humorous investigations into the mechanics of media toy with imagery by distorting the functions of space, movement, sound, context and color to create new perspectives.

    Threesixty is a lifesize video installation of a skateboarder doing a 360 degree turn while cameras shoot him from four angles. The footage is edited so that the skater, while turning, appears to stay still while the room turns around him. The result is a collapse of linearity and a presentation of an impossible view (a view not possible from the subjective position of the skateboarder or cameras, only available to the viewer of the video installation). Hanley draws a parallel between music DJing techniques and his visual work with an interest in the writing and reading of the record (according to Adorno, the record’s message is ‘simultaneously fixed and hidden’, delivering an abstract indexical writing contained within the groove). Accordingly, in the video work Re-counting a Dancing Man, Hanley manually moves the footage of a store-bought Fred Astaire dance performance giving it the appearance of jumping forward and back akin to a DJ’s record scratching.

    Threesixty is the first in a two part series that takes the mixing of music and video as a starting point. Hanely’s exhibition, his first in Canada, is followed by the work of London artist Christian Kuras who also manipulates visual imagery through a relationship to the treatment of sound. Hanley’s suspension of action and conflated viewpoints sets up a dialogue with Kuras’ work that examines the hearing and seeing of looped sound to reflect upon a self-contained circularity of power.

Talks & Events

  • Artist Talk

    CHRISTIAN KURAS
    April 30, 2005

    Artist’s talk presented in conjunction with the exhibition, Drone.

Publications

  • Correlated Rotations

    Correlations front
    Correlations spine
    Correlations back

    Title: Correlated Rotations
    Category: Exhibition Catalogue
    Artist: Brady Cranfield, Kevin Hanley, Christian Kuras, Tim Lee
    Writers: Tim Lee
    Editor: Artspeak
    Design: Julian Gosper
    Publisher: Artspeak
    Year published: 2005
    Cover: Paper
    Binding: Three-panel Foldout
    Process: Offset
    Features: 3 colour images, 7’’ vinyl record by Brady Cranfield
    Dimensions: 18.5 x 18.5 x 0.5 cm
    Weight: 113 g
    ISBN: 0-921394-51-9
    Price: $20 CDN


    Choose Shipping Option