The Re'eh Series

Note: The Re'eh Series is shown also at the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, 1999.

Foreword

The Wichita Art Museum is honored to join the limited number of American galleries and museums which have been selected by Irwin Kremen to show his Re'eh series.

In 1987, while visiting the artist's home and studio in Durham, N.C., I was given the opportunity to view these collages for the first time. I will never forget the impact of that first viewing. Nor will I forget the response of audiences in Memphis when the Re'eh series was included as a part of a retrospective exhibition at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

This exhibition coincides with the Wichita presentation of From the 2nd Decade: Collages by Irwin Kremen 1979-1989, organized and circulated by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art. We thank Ted Potter and the staff of SECCA for this opportunity and for their ongoing efforts in planning important and challenging contemporary art exhibitions.

The Re'eh Series was shown also at the Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania. October 30 - November 7, 1985, the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, April 2 - May 10, 1992, the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art, Greensboro, North Carolina, September 8 - October 27, 1996, and the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, Fall, 1999. The exhibition is available for display at other sites by contacting the artist.

J. Richard Gruber
Director
Wichita Art Museum

The Re'eh Series by Irvin Kremen

Developed between 1980 and 1985, this series consists of 11 collages that are distinct within Kremen's oeuvre in that they are bound to a single theme. Together, they constitute his artistic confrontation with the Holocaust. Significantly, the confrontation is approached indirectly, by way of evocation rather than illustration, like poems that etch images of feeling in us rather than weaving stories. In this context, Kremen's abstractness assumes special meaning, as though abstractness alone can articulate the unuterrable....Consistent with his other collages, these are also beautiful, equisitely so, and some might wonder if this fact about them is appropriate to the subject which is their concern. When I put this question to the artist, he responded that he had already put it to himself, adding that the making of collages was for him the making of a monument and that a monument could reconcile beauty and terror. This I knew, though I had to be reminded--that a monument need not be physically large, nor cut from stone, nor cast in bronze, nor placed in a public square. It need only be large in meaning, wrought from conviction, shaped by authenthic feeling, and sustained by quality. All of which this one surely is.

Carl Belz, Director
The Rose Art Museum
Brandeis University
September, 1996

Click to enlarge images

Re'eh Ten is One, 1983-84. Paper. 11 1/16 x 4 7/8 (28.1 x 12.4)

Re'eh Alle!, 1981-82/84. Paper. 5 3/8 x 14 15/16 (13.7 x 37.9)

Re'eh The Three Graces, 1982/1984. Paper. 31 x 16 5/8 (78.8 x 42.2)

Re'eh ...and by Gun, 1983. Paper and photomechanical transfer paper. 3 13/16 x 13 (9.8 x 32.6)

Re'eh Im Lager, 1980. Paper. 3 3/4 x 3 1/8 (9.6 x 8.0)

Re'eh Broken Words, 1981. Paper. 3 5/8 x 11 1/2 (9.2 x 29.3)

Re'eh The Inconsolable, 1980. Paper and mimeograph master. 12 11/16 x 5 15/16 (32.1 x 12.6)

Re'eh Panathenaic 807985, 1983. Paper. 3 1/2 x 19 13/16 (8.9 x 50.2)

Re'eh Unto Dust, 1985. Tar(?) and paper fragments, blotting paper. 12 x 5 1/8 (30.5 x 13.0)

Re'eh Transport, 1983. Paper and fragments of organic matter. 7 1/4 x 18 13/16 (18.4 x 47.8)

without a name

Re'eh Without a Name, 1982. Paper. 5 7/8 x 5 15/16 (14.8 x 15.0)

Wichita Art Museum
January 14 February 25,1990

The Re'eh Series

From the 2nd Decade: The Re eh Series by Irwin Kremen, 1980-1985

Photography by Richard Faughn

This publication was partially supported by a grant from the Duke University Research Council.

Site constructed with permission of the artist.