Present Tense
Montegomery Museum of Fine Arts
October 13, 2023 through January 7, 2024
On view in the Goldman, Richard, and Rushton Galleries
In Present Tense, contemporary artists, Kira Nam Greene (American, born South Korea), David Crismon (American, born 1964), and the collaborative team E2: Kleinveld and Julien (Elizabeth Kleinveld, American, born 1967; Epaul Julien, American, born 1972), bring a contemporary twist to art historical traditions. Working with paint or photography, these artists reveal new directions in portraiture and still life.
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts
One Museum Drive
Montgomery, Alabama 36117
Kira Nam Greene’s work explores female sexuality, desire and control through figure and food still-life paintings, surrounded by complex patterns. Imbuing the feminist legacies of Pattern and Decoration Movement with transnational, multicultural motifs, Greene creates colorful paintings that are unique combinations of realism and abstraction, employing diverse media such as oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor and colored pencil. Combining Pop Art tropes and transnationalism, she also examines the politics of food through the depiction of brand name food products, or junk food. Recently, Greene started a figurative painting series spurred by the 2016 Presidential Election, Women’s March, #metoo movement and ensuing crisis of conscience, this new body of work aspires to present the power of collective action by women.