Russna Kaur at COOPER COLE, Toronto

COOPER COLE is pleased to present It splits off, gently lifting under the pull, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Russna Kaur. This marks the artist’s first presentation with the gallery.

The exhibition brings together a group of large-scale, multi-panel paintings that operate in the space between what is visible and what remains concealed. Resistant to immediate interpretation, the works sustain a sense of ambiguity, allowing forms and meanings to shift over time.

Through mark-making, composition, and scale, the paintings gesture toward memory and identity before dissolving back into abstraction. Bright, vibrant colours initially appear playful but quickly give way to friction and instability. Within this tension, surfaces peel and shift, revealing something unspoken. Kaur’s abstractions carry the weight of personal and cultural histories without fixing meaning, leaving the works open to multiple interpretations, and inviting contemplative engagement.

Layering shapes form the meaning of Kaur’s paintings. Panels of canvas are assembled together, emphasizing the work’s physical structure. Repeated gestures, accumulated paint, and overlapping surfaces become analogues for emotion and generational memory. These processes echo Kaur’s early studies in biology, which sharpened her attention to hidden systems, internal frameworks, and the accumulation of time. Rather than resolving these tensions, Kaur sustains them, allowing the paintings to remain dynamic spaces where meaning is continuously formed and undone.

Russna Kaur (b. 1991, Brampton, Ontario, Canada) is an artist whose abstract paintings are characterized by an experimental use of colour and materials. Kaur completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Waterloo and a Master of Fine Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Kaur has exhibited at the Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Audain Art Museum, Whistler; College Art Galleries at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan; Art Gallery of Burlington, Burlington; Galerie Isa, Mumbai, and Gajah Gallery, Yogyakarta. Kaur has been an artist-in-residence at the Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver; Centrum Emerging Artist Residency, Port Townsend; Independent Artist Residency, Los Angeles; Wassaic Project, New York, and the Annandale Artist Residency, Prince Edward Island.

Kaur’s work is held in numerous private, corporate and institutional collections including the Audain Art Museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Surrey Art Gallery, the Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art, as well as the TD Bank Collection, RBC Art Collection, Desjardins Collection. Kaur lives and works in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.