Ajay! Kurian!

Born: 1984, Baltimore, MD; lives and works in New York City


Photo by Eran Wilkenfeld

“Ajay Kurian is an artist whose work celebrates the layers of meaning and historicity embedded into the understanding of an object. A wide variety of inspirations find themselves literally and figuratively implanted into his work: from the literature he reads to the streets he inhabits. This speaks of the different methods of communication in the modern world and the deepening assimilation of technologies into quotidian existence.

Kurian situates his work in an arena in which, “something gets so close to not being, that’s when it becomes radically powerful and evocative. When a shape is just about to take form or when it is just about to disappear, it becomes beautiful. Just as when a bubble pops. Just as when dormant sand takes shape, just as when words appear from mottled and ruddy dirt […] As long as we approach reality as such – asymptotically – we may be unwittingly bound to the tragic.”

Comfort Zone 6, 2017. Vertical Gardens Exhibition Antenna Space, Shanghai.

Posessions, Exhibition at Sies + Höke 2019-2020

Rise, 2017 Whitney Biennial Exhibition