Uri Aran

Uri Aran (b. 1977, Israel) lives and works in New York, and studied Design at the Bezalel Academy Jerusalem (2004), before graduating with an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, New York (2007). Aran’s practice encompasses a wide range of media and subject matter, including film, sculpture, drawing, and assemblage. Throughout his practice, Aran constructs a language of indeterminate signifiers in an ongoing pursuit of graphic and linguistic systems, and the pushing of these systems to the point of disintegration.

Ranging from work comprising cookies glued to a desk, to a performance of spelling words with bagels, the multimedia works of Uri Aran are often cryptic with a touch of humour. Though unbound by particular media or approach, Aran is most known for his sculptural installations and performances that oscillate between the familiar and the uncanny and examine the hierarchies behind everyday interactions.
In his sculptural installations, Aran typically uses a table as a blank canvas on which to place found objects. The materials he uses include grapes, balls of string, chocolate chip cookies and coffee cup lids—objects that echo his inclination towards circularity. Focusing on the process of arranging, Aran often leaves these tablescapes seemingly incomplete or in a state of transition.