Kour Pour creates paintings and prints that 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 his practice is a methodology of appropriation: hieroglyphics are drawn from Ancient Egypt; small figures are depicted in the style of Persian miniature painting; arabic lettering recalls medieval Islamic manuscripts; swathes of bright colour elicit Abstract Expressionism and action art; and decorative borders evoke the 1970s Pattern and Decoration movement in America. Together, these eclectic aesthetic symbols accumulate to examine cultural development in a post-colonial age.
