Alex Kremer's oil paintings constitute an intricate visual language underlain by expressive tension. The tangled color composition covers the canvas, and the signature, sometimes extends across the entire breath of the painting and is akin to extroversion of a stormy inner world of thought and emotion. The artist's material color and gestures, reveal sharp body movements and seem to beckon the viewer to enter the painting and to wallow in it. The color surfaces are built one atop the other, intermingling, generating a depth of dense fibers and threads, traces, and waves on the canvas. The viewer's interaction with the painting is facilitated by images such as intertwining branches and shot arrows – symbolic forms arranged on the painterly plane. The artist seems to seek an exact mechanism capable of containing and interpreting his personal experience of his encounter with various places and people through the visual language.
In the series "Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna)" (2006-2009) presented in the exhibition alongside Kremer's earlier works, the artist engages in a powerful dialogue with the historical and archaeological landscape of the site. The series organically combines a realistic depiction of nature with the fantasy and enchanted magic invoked by the place.
The dramatic brush strokes, executed by means of different spatulas (broad, narrow, long, short), convey the impression of a hectic act of liberation, a discharge, often corresponding with classical German Expressionism. As Kremer works on the canvas, he covers and uncovers, mixes and subtracts, erases and begins with rapid hand movements which spawn concurrent likeness and difference.
Matter and form are intertwined and overflow. An important aspect of Kremer's art is the creation of equilibrium between masses, between abundance and depletion, between fusion and disappearance. The creative process, which begins with a state of discomfort and resembles a near-violent struggle, gives rise to highly-charged, dramatic painting often containing a serial repetition of a single trace in a process of concealment and exposure.
This exhibition has been curated by Varda Steinlauf.
Read more about the exhibition of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art's website.