Kour Pour b. 1987, UK

British-Iranian artist Kour Pour has quickly developed a reputation for meticulously composed and delicately rendered artworks that intersect diverse material and aesthetic traditions, allowing for a remapping of the standard understanding of “Eastern/Western” cultural exchange. Appropriating forms and techniques from numerous cultures and time periods, Pour’s truly global vision weaves together representational imagery, abstract patterning, and ornamental elements to create new hybrid artworks—equally ancient, classical, and contemporary—a constellation of influences from Iran, Britain, Egypt, India, and China, among others.

In his recent series TBT, Pour draws influence from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ink painting traditions, contemplating the tiger as an ambiguous actor—both distinctive and camouflaged, beautiful and dangerous, but sometimes depicted as cute, funny, or even not of this world. The ambiguity of the tiger, reinforced through Pour's multiple techniques, enables it to transcend the specificity of any one image, and to become an enigmatic entity with indeterminate grounding. Pour says, “There is... an element of surrealism in these works, a floating feeling, an in-between space. The tigers seem to be leaving their environments in the background to step forward and emerge into new territory.”