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Naomie KREMER

Duende

March 6 - April 26, 2025

Reception for the artist Thursday, March 6th, 6-8PM

Naomie KREMER

Scrum

2024

oil and acrylic on linen
48 x 50 inches
NKR 381

Summary

 

When Naomie Kremer approaches a blank canvas with a loaded brush, she cannot predict the first move she'll make. She takes a deep breath. She raises her arm. She presses glistening bristles against smooth white linen to make a mark. Departing from this arbitrary point, she forms a line.

 
The act is pure impulse, drawing on decades of practice. Though necessary, dexterity is not sufficient. “I have to pay close attention to when the impulse ends,” she says. “I have to recognize where it needs to be nurtured and coaxed to its natural conclusion.”

 
An apt word for this creative act is duende. Originally used in relation to flamenco, the term was most memorably defined by the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who called it “a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive, all that the performer is creating at a certain moment.” Duende is the essence of performance at the highest level, whether on the guitar or with a paintbrush.


In the spirit of Garcia Lorca’s writing and in recognition of Kremer’s performative approach to painting, Modernism is pleased to present Duende, a selection of fifteen paintings and one video that show the artistic power of impulse guided by flawless technique grounded in conceptual ingenuity and theoretical rigor.

 

Kremer first started to grapple with the theoretical problems underlying this new body of work while studying art history at Sussex University. Reading Wassily Kandinsky’s Point and Line to Plane, Kremer discovered an approach to abstraction premised on linear dynamism. The dynamism Kandinsky described coincided with her way of creating abstract spaces through movement. What distinguishes the current work conceptually, she explains is that she’s conjuring “stories and events within those places.” She conjures them instinctively, not fully knowing their significance.

 
Each abstract narrative elaborates on the first line she makes with her loaded brush. “As soon as something is visible, it becomes something to react to,” she explains. The painting that emerges is a self-contained world defined through action, the visual equivalent of a work of fiction. Smaller paintings such as Bo and Lu are as succinct as short stories, whereas larger works such as Copia or Complot have the layered quality of novels.

 
Like Kandinsky, Kremer finds creative potential in the interstitial space between genres. (A video work in the exhibition, titled Zuzzy, animates a set of her drawings, superimposing footage of dancers.) Both literally and metaphorically, line is Kremer’s throughline, and also connects her work to the graphic duende of artists ranging from Henri Matisse to Ellsworth Kelly.

 
In Theory and Play of the Duende Garcia Lorca wrote that the duende “draws close to places where forms fuse in a yearning beyond visible expression.” That yearning (which Matisse called “the desire of the line”) is the origin of Kremer’s new abstract paintings. The destination is in the imagination of each viewer for whom they make meaning.