Introduction

Gabriel Kuri's Offering is a multi part sculpture commissioned by Saint-Martin Bookshop. This will stem from an array of sculptural props (some found, some purchased, some fabricated by the artist) snugly nestled in a crate lined with customized foam.

Every week over a period of one month, two or more of these elements will find their way out of the device, and onto display tables visible from the street through the shop windows. These elements will be used by the artist to compose an unscripted series of pieces, light in touch and involving gestures such as wedging, balancing or holding.

These weekly artworks will spark from the contrasting informational content of the elements, or else result from the consonance of their rhyming forms. These forms could be seen as references to systems of coding, accounting, valuation and exchange, tokens of fortune and desire shifting in scale and wear, and never far from the artist's hands. Like in much of Kuri’s work, Offering is a sculptural exercise in which material qualities and semantic implications become actively engaged in one circular statement.

On the occasion of Kuri's exhibition at Saint-Martin Bookshop, curator and writer Dieter Roelstraete has written a short text entitled A Neighborhood of Things – Read it here.