Kemar Keanu Wynter
Kemar Keanu Wynter (b. Brooklyn, NY) holds a BFA from the SUNY Purchase School of Art and Design. Drawing upon his years of Friday nights cooking in familial kitchens and a nourished upbringing along the bakery and jerk shop-lined cross-streets of Crown Heights, Kemar Keanu Wynter’s abstract works are a generous stew of language and pigment. Layers of luscious, gestural strokes draw the viewer into fields of color which frequently operate with coded references to his histories; one, storied and generations-long in the Antilles and another budding and burgeoning in the Five Boroughs. In each work, Wynter pushes the boundaries of abstract composition, accentuating and blurring, constructing and erasing, contrasting and blending. In this manner, layered processes of remembering become material form. Reminiscences are enabled through subtle slippages of line, overlapping spills of paint and an energetic language of coded marks.
Recent solo exhibitions include; Rücken-, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York, NY, ‘Heralds’ Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York (2023), ‘Digest’ Encounter, Lisbon (2023), ‘Pairings’ Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York (2021), ‘Portions’ Tiger Strikes Asteroid, New York (2021). He has exhibited in several recent group shows including; ‘Mama’s in the Kitchen’, Anat Ebgi, New York (2024), ‘Death of Beauty’ Sargents Daughters, Los Angeles (2023), ‘Notes on Ecstatic Unity’ OTP Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021), ‘Faraway Nearby’ North Loop Gallery, Massachusetts (2021), ‘Friends and Family’, Magenta Plains, New York (2021), ‘Shining in the Low Tide’ Unclebrother, Hancock, New York (2021) and ‘I Saw it Hang Down There’ Bode Projects, Berlin (2021). Wynter has been an artist-in-residence at The Macedonia Institute, Anderson Ranch Centre, Ox-Bow School of Art, the ARoS Kunstmuseum in Aarhus, Denmark and AQB in Budapest, Hungary (both facilitated by Flux Factory, New York). His work is held in the collection of the Art Galleries at Black Studies at the University of Texas, Austin as well as important private collections internationally. His paintings have also recently been featured in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail and The New York Times.
