Uri Aran

Upon entering House, we traverse a foyer-like hallway, in which sit a row of faintly buzzing overhead projectors casting odd and familiar images on the opposite wall. As we walk between the line of antiquated and funny machines and their pictures, we hear the muffled sound of music emanating from another room, and feel ourselves welcomed and a little altered, as though we’ve undergone a comic rite of passage. We are conscious of having gone from one state to another, from outside to within, and this feeling colors our encounters with the exhibition’s sculptures, paintings, and films—works whose utter unpretentiousness bely the material meticulousness with which they have been composed and built. In this show, and in all Aran’s work, playfulness and drama, nostalgia and wit, awkwardness and finesse all comfortably cohabitate. 

—Tommy Brewer

Uri Aran (b. 1977, Jerusalem) lives and works in New York. 

He received a Bachelor of Design from Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem in 2004, studied at Cooper Union and graduated with an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, New York in 2007. 

Select solo exhibitions include zero point anything, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2024); I’m a Restaurant, Andrew Kreps, New York (2023); Take this Dog for Example, The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2023); The Fastest Boy in the World, Andrew Kreps, New York (2021); Eggs for Breakfast and a Bird in a Blanket, The Club, Tokyo (2021); Oranges vs Them, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2021); House, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York (2020); Tenants Like These, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2019); Two Things About Suffering, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2016); Mice, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2016); Multi Colored Blue, Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome (2015); Puddles, Peep Hole, Milan (2014); Hat on Hook, Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Portland, OR (2014); Five Minutes Before, South London Gallery, London (2013); and here, here and here, Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich (2013).

Aran participated in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); A Needle Walks into a Haystack, Liverpool Biennial 2014, Liverpool (2014); and The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, Venice (2013).

Aran’s work is included in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; ICA Miami, Miami; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Fundació Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma, Palma de Mallorca, Spain; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; KADIST, Paris and San Francisco CA; American University, Washington DC; and RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

Aran has a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Madre Museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, IT (2025).