South likes: Gabriel Kuri at The Common Guild, Glasgow

South likes: Gabriel Kuri at The Common Guild, Glasgow
All probability resolves into form
The Common Guild, Glasgow, U.K.
4 April – 7 June, 2014

In the context of Glasgow International, The Common Guild presents Gabriel Kuri’s exhibition All probability resolves into form. For his first solo show in Scotland, the Mexican artist presents new works that are very much in line with his existing practice. Starting from found or donated everyday objects Kuri makes sculptures that, at least on a formal level, attain a status of all but mundane, art-fair-type installations. Interestingly though and regardless of the show’s fairly crammed opening, there is not much space left to wander around the pieces. In three of his works, Untitled Quick Platform 01, 02 and 03, Kuri employs his renown aluminium blankets. This time however he uses them mostly as surfaces for other objects, such as packaged matches, bottled water and fire extinguishers. From the entrance of the room where it is installed, Untitled Polling Table appears like a set of empty shelves. Moving around the piece however, one can discover toiletries (like toothpaste and soap) and linen stacked within the structure. The show seems to be full of such tricks, which contest the visibility and significance of objects in a gallery space as much as in an art installation. Some bedding and toiletries are installed on a stairway to which the access is blocked by a stanchion-like rope. The ambiguity around art and non-art objects is heightened by the fact that throughout the show The Common Guild accepts donations of useable objects that will afterwards be donated to Glasgow organisations dealing with homelessness and disasters.

Angeliki Roussou

http://www.thecommonguild.org.uk/2013/11/gabriel-kuri/