Exhibitions

Paul Kremer: Windows
June 25 - August 7, 2021

Louis Buhl & Co. is pleased to present Windows, a solo exhibition of unique works by Houston-based artist Paul Kremer, opening Friday, June 25th. Known for his distinctly organic minimalist abstractions, Kremer uses traditional methods, working with fluid acrylics on raw canvas to achieve heavily formal compositions that are softened by the texture of their permeable support. What stands out in Kremer’s work is how flat fields of color embody a liveliness rarely seen in such precise works, as they are rooted in the immediacy and primacy of the everyday.

Windows will showcase a range of acrylic works on paper complimented by two works on canvas as a continuation of the artist’s distinctive Window Painting series. Windows have been painted throughout history — Kremer cites Lois Dodd, Vilhelm Hammershoi, and Pierre Bonnard as some of his favorite artists to partake. In this style of work, Kremer layers flat fields of color to create an abstracted and simplified depiction of a window situated within a bare room. Rather than interpreting the scene as just that, Kremer invites his audience to perceive the window as a painting hanging on the wall, the minimalist view characterized by the organic landforms outside existing independently as a work of art in and of itself. Says Kremer: “Windows are especially interesting when you don't look at them as windows, but instead, a picture created within the window frame.”

Exemplified in Windows, Kremer’s ability to imagine countless compositions using the same assortment of primary colors and stylistic components is impressive. Graphic applications of color define the works’ inherent flatness, however, an illusion of depth is simultaneously projected onto the viewer, introducing a dichotomy that is uniquely synergetic. The forms within the pieces are abstract, but not to the point where representation is entirely neglected. In addition to the digestible yet bold configurations, the works’ titles give cues to their inspiration and insight into their real-life allusion. This combination of factors allows for the viewer to easily interpret the scene and further understand it through their own knowledge of the subject and its material existence, resulting in an enjoyable connection to the abstraction’s referential qualities.

Art in America’s Raphael Rubinstein speaks to Kremer’s Window Paintings and practice as a whole: “One of the marvelous things about Paul Kremer’s work is how he reconciles, not only in the Window Paintings but consistently throughout his work, the legacies of Classical and Modernist art. Kremer is also keenly aware that today, the dominant model is neither Renaissance perspective nor Modernist flatness, but the virtual space of digital screens. Here, too — by sketching his paintings on a computer, then emphatically making them by hand — Kremer deconstructs binary thinking. What makes Kremer’s demolition of binary structures all the more impressive is that he is able to do so with such ebullience, such joy in the sheer facts of color and shape.”

Paul Kremer: Windows will be on view from June 25 through August 7, 2021.