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Artist Index >> Koury, Abstract
Aleah Koury is one of the most innovative artists working in the United States today and manages to consistently surprise and delight with his ability to explore new mediums and subject matter.
Aleah’s recent work has included a number of different series of abstract pieces: with the “Organic Geometry”,series Aleah has created works in which whimsical and geometric forms, reminiscent at times of Paul Klee or Joan Miro, float across multi-layered backgrounds impregnated with a dazzling variety of materials. Aleah is particularly recognized as a master of the pastel, and these pieces glow with the intense, saturated color characteristic of Aleah’s work in pastel. However, in the “Organic Geometry” series Aleah has combined this most delicate of mediums with a variety of other, coarser materials: collaged cardboard and canvas, branding, scoring and tearing, to create works on paper with uniquely textured, robust surfaces.
While the “Organic Geometry” pieces with titles like “Spun, “Scattered” and “Playing on the Edge” have the sense of objects, perhaps even figures, moving within an infinite space suggested by translucent veils of pastel color in their backgrounds, two of Aleah’s other new bodies of abstract work “Way of Things” & “Of This World” have a different quality. These pieces are also dense with color and texture, but with their minimal compositions and rectilinear silhouettes, they appear stark and beautiful in their simplicity. There is no whimsy here, only a distilled purity of color and form that is expressive of a transcendent spirit made physical.
Aleah’s most recent body of work: “Oh Happy Days” is based around exquisite hand-made papers from Tibet. These papers are sewn onto backing paper & combined with copper plate & other materials. Aleah’s experiments with burning, rusting, & oxidized & patinated finishes is carried even further in these works, resulting in pieces of unparalleled delicacy & beauty.
Aleah Koury was born in Bellingham, Washington, and spent his early childhood in California before moving to the Midwest. In 1975, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Missouri at Columbia and in 1980 a Master’s from the University of Southern Illinois at Edwardsville. Since that time Koury has lived in and around San Francisco and the Bay area.
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