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  • 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.

  • Melanie O’Brian

    Director/Curator of Artspeak 2004–2010.

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.

Talks & Events

  • Artist Talk

    CHRISTIAN KURAS
    April 30, 2005

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