Shai Kremer

W.T.C: Concrete Abstract #6

2011-2013

Shai Kremer is an Israeli conceptual photographer whose work has generated worldwide critical acclaim. Earlier projects include his multi-year series of large scale works, Concrete Abstract, that offer a look at the reconstruction effort at the site of the World Trade Center through the use of multiple image overlays that span the construction from 2011 to 2013. Kremer’s 2010 series, Notes From the Edges, concentrates on views of New York from its perimeter, emphasizing the dichotomy of destruction and reconstruction. Kremer focused his lens on the lesser-known landscapes that exist in the periphery, where the urban structure begins to decay and rejoin with nature. His early series, Infected Landscape and Fallen Empires, examined contested territories throughout Israel where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has left an indelible imprint on both the land and the psyche of its inhabitants.
In his austerely beautiful, medium- to large-format color photographs, Shai Kremer captures the marks of conflict and history on the fraught and mutable landscapes of Israel and New York City. He sees these landscapes as palimpsests on which can be read the rise and fall of empires, continuing power struggles, and changing socio-economic conditions that allow certain structures to rise and others to disappear. Working in series, he positions himself at the margins—the Israeli desert, the edges of New York—to broaden his perspective, intellectually and visually. Kremer has photographed military training grounds in the Negev desert, archaeological ruins, and the various borders dividing the Israelis from the Palestinians—sites so subtle they appear mundane. In New York, he has been focusing on the changing World Trade Center site and on humble and crumbling interstitial structures. Kremer’s artworks can be found at the following museum collections:
Metropolitan Museum of Art- New York, SF MoMA - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
Museum of Fine Arts Houston,
Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Pilara Foundation Pier 24, San Francisco, Israel Museum Jerusalem Israel
, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art,
Museum on the Seam Jerusalem,
FMoPa. Tampa, USA,
Chapman Museum. New York, Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Brunswick, Rose Museum at Brandeis University. Waltham, MA
Musée de la roche-sur-Yon, France,
Nevada Museum of Art, Harvard University. Cambridge, 9/11 Memorial Museum New York NY