Culture Now: Uri Aran

Artist Uri Aran is in conversation with curator Alessandro Rabottini, discussing his practice on the occasion of his new solo show Two Things About Suffering at Sadie Coles HQ, London (01 Sep – 01 Oct 2016). Alessandro Rabottini recently contributed an essay to Aran’s publication SOLO (AMC Collezione Coppola, 2015).

Presenting related videos, sculptures and paintings, with his new exhibition Aran probes the concept of genre—whether theatrical or artistic—and its reliance on conventions of structure, gesture and affect. Aran has come to attention over the last decade for his complex, emotive and humorous manipulations of commonplace formulae – whether objects or images, actions or statements.

Uri Aran (b. 1977, Jerusalem) lives and works in New York. He graduated from Columbia University in 2007, and has since exhibited internationally, with major solo presentations includingMice, Koelnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany (2016); Puddles, Peep-Hole, Milan (2014); Five Minutes Before, South London Gallery (2013); and here, here and here, Kunsthalle Zürich (2013). He has been included in group exhibitions including Question the Wall Itself, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (MY), USA (2016); Walter Benjamin: Exilic Archive, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2016); do it, various international venues (2013-15); Liverpool Biennial 2014 (2014); the2014 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th Venice Biennale, Venice (2013); and Empire State: New York Art Now, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2013).

Alessandro Rabottini (1976) is a curator and art critic based in London and Milan, and Artistic Director of miart, the international fair of modern and contemporary art. He was Chief Curator of GAMeC Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bergamo from 2001 to 2012, and Curator at Large at MADRE Donnaregina Museum of Contemporary Art in Naples from 2012 to 2015, institutions for which he has curated solo shows of international artists like Mircea Cantor, Keren Cytter, Latifa Echakhch, Giuseppe Gabellone, David Maljkovic, Victor Man, Robert Overby, Walid Raad, Pietro Roccasalva, Tim Rollins & K.O.S, Sterling Ruby, Padraig Timoney, Ettore Spalletti, Tris Vonna-Michell and Jordan Wolfson. As independent curator he organised exhibitions of Gianfranco Baruchello, Patrizio Di Massimo, John Latham, Elad Lassry, Guillaume Leblon, and Danh Vo among others.