Uri Aran

Edition
$6500.00

After Doodle, 2017
Silkscreen monotype with ink and graphite drawing
20 x 23.5 inches (framed)
Edition of 20 + 4 AP, each unique
$6,500 + shipping

For ICI, Uri Aran has created After Doodle, a series of meticulously printed, painted and drawn assemblages, which include playful doodles, stream-of-consciousness thoughts, rhetorical questions and comical prompts that have been removed from their original context. Together, these informal markings are arranged to appear both recognizable and uncanny – how we read them exposes our own complicities within idiosyncratic systems of personal and cultural communication. Each work in this series is completely unique and involved a silkscreen monotype with individual drawing and painting on white satin somerset paper.

Aran has expanded upon his original instruction “Doodle” for the ICI exhibition do it, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. After Doodle will support ICI’s newest initiative, do it (in school), a new version of do it that will create a different approach to art education for 300+ students in NYC public schools in 2018. Although doodling may look like nonsense, it is intrinsically linked to the subconscious, helps us to remember information, and provides a reprieve from the information we must wade through and categorize on a daily basis. Anyone can doodle and Aran invites you to draw and think alongside him.

Uri Aran’s (b. 1977 in Jerusalem, based in NY) paintings, videos, sculptures, performances and drawings are often composed of familiar objects and motifs in unfamiliar ways. The investigation of language and the rationale to organize knowledge into legible and hierarchical systems are fundamental to his practice. Often unfolding like an intimate storyboard, Aran’s configurations evoke fragments of a narrative, hinting at more open-ended and non-linear methods of communication that propose multiple routes through the work.

Aran’s major solo presentations include Mice, Koelnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany (2016); Puddles, Peep-Hole, Milan, Italy (2014); Five Minutes Before, South London Gallery, United Kingdom (2013); and here, here and here, Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (2013). Group exhibitions include Walter Benjamin: Exilic Archive, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2016); do it, various international venues (2013-ongoing); Liverpool Biennial, United Kingdom (2014); the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th Venice Biennale, Italy (2013); and Empire State: New York Art Now, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy (2013). From November 2015-May 2017, his work will be featured in Question the Wall Itself at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 2015, the first major monograph on the artist’s work was published by JRP-Ringier to mark his exhibitions at South London Gallery and Kunsthalle Zürich, with texts by Fionn Meade and Liam Gillick and an interview by Beatrix Ruf, Niels Olsen, and Fredi Fischli.