Modernism is pleased to present an exhibition of exciting new works by Naomie Kremer.
“The natural world has always informed my work—the endless complexity of natural forms, the unexpected color combinations, the haphazard compositions. These landscapes are mnemonic devices, memoirs, of places that entered us as we entered them. We have always known that memories are fugitive, but now the earth itself seems fugitive.”
–Naomie Kremer
Vivid with motion and color, Naomie Kremer’s imagery is based in the real world, whether it’s nature, architecture, language and letterforms, or the human figure. Her work comes from a wide range of sources and inspirations, including art history, music, poetry and literature. Kremer talks about it using the somewhat contradictory phrase “Abstract Surrealism”. Translating her experience through the language of abstraction, she creates worlds that are more real than reality – “surreal”. She brings the work to that razor sharp edge between abstraction (e.g. De Kooning, Joan Mitchell) and nature (e.g. Monet).
Some of Kremer’s newest works integrate, in a very rich and complex fashion (Weltanschauung), the media of painting, video, and music. This exhibition will present a short video: In the Beginning came about through Kremer’s work on a documentary project with filmmaker David Grubin about the book of Genesis.
The animations of these stories, about the creation of the world according to the Bible, are constructed from a mix of Kremer’s existing video archives, newly recorded footage, and her paintings.
A painter, video artist, and stage designer, Kremer’s work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad. Her video-based set designs include the recent production of The Secret Garden commissioned by the San Francisco Opera, and Light Moves, a collaboration with Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Her exhibition Age of Entanglement at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art in 2015 was selected as one of the year’s best by the publication Square Cylinder. Rudimentary Moves, a video piece by Kremer, was exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum on the huge outdoor monitor during the opening weekend of the new museum in February 2016. Kremer also has an ongoing nightly video installation at SF Jazz Center. Her work is in many collections, including the Berkeley Art Museum; The Whitney Museum; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Magnes Museum and the United States Embassy in Beijing, China. She has taught painting and drawing at The San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, California State University at Hayward, and the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art in Brittany, France. She has lectured widely, including at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University, England, and at the Syracuse University program in Florence, Italy. Kremer works in Oakland, California, New York City, and Paris, France.
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