Lebanese American artist Nadim Kurani was born in 1965 and spent his youth in Beirut, Lebanon. He lived through the Lebanese civil war – a blunt period of balancing survival with creativity. His early years were absorbed by collecting rocks and fossils, and re-drawing cereal box graphics.
Nadim immigrated to the United States in 1986 where he earned his Bachelor of Architecture. Always fascinated with the Surrealist movement and its inherent associations between distant realities, in 1994 he created his first work of art, casting concrete around off-the-shelf bits of hardware, making unique industrial and functional creations. His work was exhibited at the Gallery of Functional Art (now Lois Lambert Gallery) in Santa Monica. The exposure led to his art being featured on set design for CBS/David Copperfield 15 Years of Magic (1994), then Warner Brothers/Batman and Robin (1997). Nadim’s work was also featured in both WIRED magazine (May 1997) and Playboy magazine (January 1999.)
In early 2000 Nadim left art and pursued more financially stable work in the corporate world as an architectural designer and graphic designer. Almost 19 years later, in 2019, Nadim made a commitment to return to his passion for creating art, combining years of fascination with basic industrial materials, rocks, and pop culture.