This exhibition includes a series of works on paper Kemp created during a seven month residency at Cité Internationale Des Arts as a guest of the City of Paris, the French Ministry of Culture and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Kemp made this trip to Paris immediately after finishing his MFA at Stanford University, where he created a body of work around a large painting called DAY DREAM NATION. The show’s works are a continuation of this project and address a time prior to the Obama presidency. They are also linked to a time in Paris when a series of riots involving mainly the burning of cars and public buildings at night started on October 27th, 2005.
Kemp’s area of artistic research since 2005 has been around the words and expressions that are connected to the color black. The consistent turn in Daydream Nation is toward the order of geometry and the honesty of the color black, a turn away from a time of chaos and political unrest. For Kemp the color black is one of possibility, honesty, emergence, improvisation and order.
