Kour Pour is an American artist of British and Iranian descent whose work investigates how images travel, transform, and acquire meaning across cultures and time. Drawing from a wide range of global visual traditions, Pour complicates the notion of fixed cultural origins and reveals the exchanges, adaptations, and contradictions embedded within familiar imagery. Through processes of layering, reproduction, and erasure, Pour creates compositions that prompt shifts in perspective, inviting us to reconsider what we see.
Pour’s studio practice exists between painting and printmaking. Alongside sweeping gestures and intricate hand painting, he explores the possibilities of printmaking as a process of transfer and transformation, extending its techniques beyond conventional applications. His compositions emerge through meticulous steps of layering and accumulation, interrupted by acts of erasure. This oscillation between what is visible and invisible is essential – what is removed becomes as significant as what remains.
Movement is central to Pour’s practice. Multiple bodies of work evolve in the studio simultaneously, as he explores shared ideas through distinct visual languages. These varied approaches create different points of entry for viewers, probing taste, cultural preference, and the ways we assign meaning and value to images. The movement within the studio echoes a broader interest in the circulation of goods, people, and ideas throughout history, shaped in part by Pour’s own experience navigating between cultures.
Kour Pour
(b. 1987, Exeter, UK)
Lives and works in Los Angeles
Education
2010
BFA Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA
Solo Exhibitions
2026
Points of Entry, Kotaro Nukaga, Tokyo, Japan
2025
Cosmic Diagrams, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada
Finding My Way Home, Nazarian/Curcio, Los Angeles, USA
2022
New Homes, New Places, Gallery 1957, London, UK
2021
Familiar Spirits, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, USA
Wild Garden, Shrine/Sargent’s Daughters, New York, USA
2020
Fallow, The Club, Tokyo, Japan
2019
Returnee, The Club, Tokyo, Japan
Manzareh/Keshiki/Landscape, Ever Gold Projects, San Francisco, USA
2018
Abrash, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, USA
Polypainting, Gnyp Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Polypainting, Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, China
2016
Onnagata, Feuer/Mesler, New York, USA
Onnagata, Gnyp Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2015
Samsara, Depart Foundation, Los Angeles, USA
2014
Ozymandias, Ellis King, Dublin, Ireland
UNTITLED, New York, USA
Selected Two-Person and Group Exhibitions
2026
Chromophilia. Celebrating Color in the Ahmanson Collection. Ahmanson Collection, Irvine, USA
2025
Spirit House, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, USA
Maximal Miniatures, Middle East Institute, Washington, D.C., USA
2024
Myth in Motion, Kotaro Nukaga, Tokyo, Japan
Spirit House, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, USA
2023
Soft Edge of the Blade, Vol. 2, Zaal Gallery, Toronto, Canada
2022
Flowers of Time, Hongwanji Dendoin, Kyoto, Japan
2021
A Boundless Drop to a Boundless Ocean, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, USA
2020
Glitch: Art and Technology Exhibitions, Margo Veillon Gallery, AUC Tahrir Square, The American University, Cairo, Egypt
2019
LA Painting, Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, USA
Centennial: 100 Years of Otis College Alumni, Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, USA
2018
Mossavar-Nameh, Dastan’s Basement, Tehran, Iran
2017
Decoration Never Dies, Anyway, Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Museum, Tokyo, Japan Horror Vacui, or The Annihilation of Space, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo, Japan
Earthquakes and The Mid Winter Burning Sun, Kazuo Shiraga & Kour Pour, Ever Gold Projects, San Fransisco, CA
2016
Labyrinth(s), Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, China
2015
Painting Show – Part One, Galerie Rudiger Schottle, Munich, Germany
From Above, Di Donna, New York, NY
2014
The Go Between, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy
2012
In The Making, Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles, CA
Wet Paint 4, Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Publications
2026
Chromophilia. Celebrating Color in the Ahmanson Collection. Published by Pinatubo Press. Texts by Roberta Green Ahmanson, Jonathan A. Anderson, John Silvis, and Nicole Miller.
2024
Spirit House. Published by the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, CA, USA and D.A.P., in conjunction
with the exhibition Spirit House at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, CA USA. Texts by Aleesa
Pitchamarn Alexander, Kathryn Cua, Pao Houa Her, Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Tai Thy, Catalina
Ouyang, Maia Cruz Palileo, Veronica Roberts, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
2022
Kour Pour. Published by Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, USA.
2021
A Boundless Drop to a Boundless Ocean, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, USA. Essay by Dr Shiva Balaghi.
2019
Kour Pour. Published by Skira, Milan, Italy. Essays by Dr. Shiva Balaghi, Masako Tanaka, and Alex Bacon.
Kour Pour, Returnee. Published by The Club, Tokyo, Japan.
2017
Decoration never dies, Anyway. Published by the Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture, in conjunction with the exhibition, Decoration never dies, Anyway at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan. Essays by Toyojiro Hida, Kasumi Yamaki, and Masako Tanaka.
Re-inventing Abstraction 1910-1925. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Earthquakes and The Mid Winter Burning Sun, at Ever Gold Projects, San Francisco, USA.
2016
Artists’ Recipes. Published by Bolo Publishing, Basel, Switzerland. Admir Jahic and Comenius Roethlisberger.
2015
Kour Pour. Published by Nero in conjunction with the exhibition Samsara at Depart Foundation, Los Angeles, USA. Essay by Nicola Ricciardi
Public + Private Collections
Ahmanson Collection, USA
Art Jameel Collection, UAE
Crocker Art Museum, USA
Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation, Bangladesh
Hood Museum of Art, USA
Orange County Museum of Art, USA
Perez Art Museum Miami, USA
The Bunker Artspace, USA
Yageo Foundation, Taiwan