SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Modernism presents an exhibition of exciting new paintings and hybrid works by Naomie Kremer.

“Sixty years ago, abstract art as exemplified by Abstract Expressionism was the king of the artistic jungle. Today it is an endangered species. Its existence is prolonged by creative and committed artists such as Naomie Kremer, who persist in the belief that ideas transferred through the physical process of painting and drawing manifest a visible and very personal record of thinking and feeling that is worthy of the intellectual and emotional consideration of others.” –Robert Flynn Johnson, Curator Emeritus, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

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 speaks of 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). Always seeking to push the boundaries of her work, Kremer will present her first 3-D hybrid, “Earthborn,” a bas-relief translation of one of her paintings, carved by a CNC machine during her artist residency at Power Art Center (PAC) in New Jersey in 2017. Exploring “Time and Materials”, which was the title of her talk at PAC, the work reflects her ongoing multi-media research in the way perception is mediated through time.

Completed in late 2017, a 40-minute experimental documentary “In the Beginning was Desire” (with NY based filmmaker David Grubin) explores the story of Adam and Eve. Kremer’s work in conceiving and creating the multiple visual directions for the entire film—from Hebrew text to animation of the Garden of Eden—has closely informed the paintings and hybrids in this exhibition, particularly the hybrid work Earthborn.

Painting continues to ground all of Kremer’s practice, generating information that reverberates through every medium she uses.

Naomie Kremer’s work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad. Her video-based set designs include the opera Alcina, by Handel, performed at the Crusader Fortress in Acre, Israel, The Secret Garden commissioned by the San Francisco Opera, and Light Moves, a collaboration with Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Her exhibition The 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 their huge outdoor LED screen during the opening month 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, the United States Embassy in Beijing, China, and most recently the Arkansas Arts Center.

Kremer 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 at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University, England, and at the Syracuse University program in Florence, Italy, among others.

Naomie Kremer works in Oakland, California, New York City, and Paris, France.