Gabriel Kuri

Gabriel Kuri is an artist based in Brussels.

What artworks would you have/do you have in your drawing room?

I have owned Poeme Poeme by Marcel Broodthaers for a few years and I never get tired of it.  It is exactly the kind of work that I go back to and think of in many ways old and new. If I could have my wish, I would wallpaper the entire drawing room with with pencil drawings by Joseph Beuys. I wouldn’t mind to superimpose a date painting (any, of course) by On Kawara. These just get better with time, and the more you think of placing them in different contexts, alongside works of distinct moments and schools, the more they gain. Always the same, always changing, one day, every day. And why not, I would love to own Poll by Thomas Demand. It is a great example of how memory and material are set off in circular motion by a provocative mental system. It is both a representation and also somewhat of an empty space to be filled. Familiar, yet I can never quite work it out. 

What books would you read/are you reading in your drawing room?

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. It is, to put it simply, a guide to understanding the present when it comes to the ways we learn, remember and communicate. A very sharp view into how the development of technologies shape human thought. Neither catastrophist nor embracing of any given notion of progress, just brilliant. I have gone back to it so often it looks really worn. Thinking in Numbers by Daniel Tammet is another rather accessible book that I have found very enlightening and re-readable. Beautifully written and full of ways of showing mathematics within the building blocks of reason.

What movies would you watch/are you watching in your drawing room?

I don´t really watch movies on my own… maybe I should start…

What music would you listen to/are you listening to in your drawing room?

Terry Riley in C, and Rainbow in Curved Air. All the various works of Bach (fugues, inventions, partitas, well tempered clavier, etc..) interpreted on the piano by Tatiana Nikolayeva. 

Who would you/do you invite into your drawing room?

Ricky Gervais. I´d love to talk to someone capable of looking into the human condition and behaviour in such depth and acuteness, and turn this into such sharp and furiously funny comedy.