Kour Pour lifts from the past to study the present. Re-mapping art histories, labour and cultural exchange, his intricate works have a rare kind of rich beauty.
Pour’s practice is founded on re-appropriation. While he is best known for his interpretations of Persian rugs, Pour’s image-making shifts between varied styles and processes. His paintings and prints weave together three main elements: ornamentation, abstraction, and repeated representational motifs.
Together, these accumulate into complex, layered compositions on canvas and paper that feel simultaneously ancient and contemporary, Eastern and Western. At the crux of Pour’s practice is his deliberate borrowing from art history: arabic lettering recalls medieval Islamic manuscripts; swathes of bright colour elicit abstract expressionism and action art; small figures are depicted in the style of Persian miniature painting; hieroglyphics are drawn from Ancient Egypt; and decorative borders evoke the 1970s Pattern and Decoration movement in America. By adopting such a vast array of symbols, Pour uses the past to examine cultural development in a post-colonial age—in all its complex contradiction.