Gabriel Kuri, Untitled (superama), 2003, handwoven Gobelin,
114 x 44 1/2 in. (113 x 287 cm)
Mexico City native Gabriel Kuri often takes a witty, conceptual approach to social commentary through language and objects drawn from his culture. Using individual experience as a point of departure, Kuri highlights fragments of daily life through the displacement of objects and ideas.
Untitled (superama), is the transformation of a receipt from a trip to a Mexican Wal-Mart into an exquisite hand-loomed Gobelin, a type of tapestry.
What we would normally consider trash is elevated to fine art in the hands of world-renowned tapestry weavers in Guadalajara, Mexico, who translate the pixilated print of the enlarged printed receipt into individual knots tied by hand. By choosing to reproduce a receipt from Wal-Mart, one of the world’s largest and most controversial commercial retailers, Kuri forces us to reexamine and reorganize the role of consumerism in the art world.
By enlarging the receipt, Kuri effectively comments on the perceived importance and preciousness of art by monumentalizing an inherently ephemeral piece of paper.
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