Kour Pour

Kour Pour (born 1987) is a British-born American artist, who is of British and Iranian-descent. His artwork is inspired by living between different cultures and he works primarily in painting and printmaking. Pour is best known for a series of carpet paintings. He lives in Los Angeles.

Early life and education

Kour Pour was born in 1987 in Exeter, Devon county, England. His Iranian father moved from Iran to England at the age of 14; and his British mother was born in England. His father owned a small carpet shop in England, and Pour would spend time there as a child.

He also often travelled to Los Angeles to visit family members on his father’s side. He attended Santa Monica College, and would ultimately move there to attend Otis College of Art and Design (BFA, 2010).

In 2014, Pour had his first solo exhibition at New York City's Untitled gallery, which "drew a frenzy" and sold out.

Pour was featured on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2015 and in 2017.

Imagery Detail of work showing replication of warp and weftPour's time in his father’s carpet shop and his interest in hip-hop are synthesized in an ongoing series of carpet paintings, a series which Pour began in his last year of school at Otis College of Art and Design. Each of the first paintings in this series was based on a particular rug or carpet that the artist researched from exhibition and auction catalogues. Later paintings in this series utilize structures and images drawn from existing carpets, but incorporate the artist's own designs as well.

Pour's carpet paintings are well-known and highly desirable, and the artist intends to continue producing these works alongside other series. In recent years, he has produced a series of paintings utilizing traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques (specifically ukiyo-e) but at a much larger scale than the processes were traditionally applied to. Another series of paintings employs paper pulp, which Pour began to work with due to his interest in origami, and the lesser-known paper craft form tsugigami. Pour began making his own paper, and mixing the paper pulp with various pigments; after some experimentation, he came around to the idea of creating a series of works using the pigmented paper pulp in lieu of paint, sculpting the pulp onto panels covered with linen. Both the woodblock paintings and the paper pulp paintings are based on Japanese Geological Survey maps, which Pour noticed for their similarities to abstract paintings from Europe and America. 2019 – Returnee at THE CLUB (Tokyo, Japan) 2018 – Abrash at Shane Campbell Gallery (Chicago, Illinois) 2018 – Polypainting at GNYP Gallery (Berlin, Germany) 2016 – Onnagata at Gnyp Gallery (Berlin, Germany) 2015 – Samsara at Depart Foundation (Los Angeles, California) 2014 – Ozymandias at Ellis King (Dublin, Ireland) 2014 – Kour Pour at UNTITLED (New York City, New York) 2020 – Glitch: Art and Technology Exhibitions at Margo Veillon Gallery, AUC Tahrir Square, The American University in Cairo (Cairo, Egypt) 2019 – LA Painting at Museum of Art and History (Lancaster, UK) 2019 – Gold Standard at Ever Gold [Projects] (San Francisco, California) 2018 – Mossavar-Nameh at Dastan’s Basement, Art Dubai 2017 – Decoration Never Dies, Anyway at Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan) 2017 – Horror Vacui, or The Annihilation of Space at Misako & Rosen (Tokyo, Japan) 2017 – Kazuo Shiraga and Kour Pour: Earthquakes and The Mid Winter Burning Sun at Ever Gold [Projects] (San Francisco, California) 2016 – Labyrinth(s) at Pearl Lam Galleries (Hong Kong, China) 2014 – The Go Between at Museo di Capodimonte (Naples, Italy) 2012 – In The Making at Roberts & Tilton (Los Angeles, California) 2012 – Wet Paint 4 at Steve Turner Gallery (Los Angeles, California) In 2015, a painting by Pour sold at a Sotheby’s auction in Doha, Qatar for $162,500, well over the estimate of $70,000-$90,000.