Secondary Market
Kurar
French, born 1983
Kurar (Aurélien Descours, born Clermont-Ferrand 1983) is a French stencil artist. His black-and-grey realist images, lit by a single fluorescent accent, show children facing screens, weapons and brand logos — a sharp look at media saturation, consumerism and violence.
Biography
Kurar is the name used by Aurélien Descours, born in Clermont-Ferrand in 1983. He came to street art through graffiti in the 1990s, painting three-dimensional lettering before turning to the stencil, the technique that defines his work today.
Childhood under pressure
Kurar’s images are almost photographic: figures cut in black and shades of grey, with one passage of fluorescent colour that catches the eye. His recurring subject is childhood confronted with the adult world — children in front of television screens, among weapons, logos and advertising. Through them he addresses consumerism, media saturation, war, pollution and inequality, often with French titles that read like slogans or questions.
Exhibitions
After a first solo show in Paris in 2013, Kurar was included in 2015 in Cut It Out!, Urban Nation’s survey of stencil art in Berlin, and painted a mural in the city on that occasion. The same year he showed in Miami during Art Basel week and in a group exhibition in Marbella with JonOne and C215. His work was presented at the opening of the URBAN NATION Museum in Berlin in 2017. Later solo exhibitions include TV Rules Your Life at Next Street Gallery, Paris (2016), Machine Don’t Dream in Shanghai (2021), Fragile at La Vallée in Brussels and Transition at the Abbaye de Saint-Riquier (both 2022), and Electric Lights at GCA Gallery, Paris (2023).
Since 2014 his works have appeared regularly in urban art sales at Paris auction houses.