NEW YORK, NY.- Alexander Berggruen is presenting Paul Kremer: Layer Hooks.
Paul Kremer has stated: “When tossing around layered art files, sometimes things land perfectly. I imagine it’s like finding a good guitar hook. Layer hooks.” In considering Layer Hooks as the visual equivalent of guitar hooks in music, where the right chord progressions sometimes mesh, Kremer seeks to achieve a balance both in each individual composition and in his body of work as a whole.
Kremer’s practice is comprised of three core functions: inspiration and conception, exploration via digital experimentation, and execution through manual articulation. The resulting geometries can conflict or harmonize with one another using dimension and weight to override flatness, resisting categorization between abstraction and representation. What first could appear as an entirely flat space within Cutout 01 might transform in a viewer’s mind into a three dimensional space, where a floor meets a wall, and an object’s shadow is cast upon these planes.
Kremer carefully considers how his own work will exist beyond digital sketches, and ultimately outside his studio. The curved form of a Dive painting might seem to extend beyond the limits of its canvas, and even into the path of another line seeming to escape its own boundaries from a neighboring Fold. Couplets and even groupings of paintings form new conversations and invoke the elements of the space in which they are installed into their overall existence.
Layer Hooks presents Paul Kremer’s new paintings and new sculptural work Extracted Sciographer. Kremer’s sculpture enables the artist to uniquely visualize how color, light, and space interact. Realized from already-existing paintings, or series of paintings, his sculptures have the ability to be manipulated in order to be used as reference material for new painting variations.
A self-taught artist, Paul Kremer was born in Chicago, IL in 1971, and now lives and works in Houston, TX. For twenty years he owned a graphic design studio, where he worked with such clients as Lou Reed, Tom Waits, PBS, and National Geographic. Kremer was a founding member of the art collective "I Love You Baby," which was active from 1998 to 2008. He co-founded this group with Rodney Chinelliot and Will Bentsen, with regular participation from other Texas-based artists, such as Mark Flood. The artist is also known for having invented the now cult-followed Tumblr and Instagram accounts “Great Art in Ugly Rooms.”
Paul Kremer has had recent solo exhibitions at Nancy Littlejohn Fine Art, Houston, TX; Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Eugene Binder, Marfa, TX; Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels; Pablo Cardoza, Houston; and Makebish, New York. Kremer has also exhibited with Marauni Mercier, Belgium; Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI; and Studio Cromie, Grottaglie, Italy.
