Emalin is pleased to present Diurne, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Kate Spencer Stewart (born in 1984, lives and works in Los Angeles, US). This is Stewart’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, following her participation in the group exhibition Hand To Your Ear, Part 2 in 2022.
The exhibition comprises seven paintings in oil on linen. Each one is square, and the series spans three sizes – ranging between vast fields and focused vignettes, each painting represents Stewart’s attempt to paint ‘nothing, or the void’. The canvases are made of fine, tightly woven linen. Stewart uses them because of their particular relationship with light: the linen’s sleek grain mounted with oil paint’s luminosity. The texture of Stewart’s brushstrokes in oil paint crushed with organic and synthetic pigments is brought into focus as it reflects light in cyclical patterns. Her paintings appear at the same time as pure surface and as pure depth, one moment impenetrable and another a plunge.
Their cycles are woven back into the exhibition’s texture with its title, Diurne. Meaning the quality of a life led in the daytime, diurnality is the sister of nocturnality, which in turn describes music written to be set in the night. The exhibition is presented without artificial light: circadian rhythms will transform the surfaces of Stewart’s paintings throughout its duration. The ambient hum of light and its city flows in and out of their picture plane.
Kate Spencer Stewart (b. 1984 Phoenix, AZ, US) lives and works in Los Angeles, US. She graduated with a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, US in 2006 and completed her MFA in painting at University of California, Los Angeles, CA, US in 2017. Recent solo exhibitions include Convention, Bureau, New York, NY, US (2022); Nature, La Maison de Rendez-Vous, Brussels, BE (2022); Kate Spencer Stewart, Park View / Paul Soto, Los Angeles, CA, US (2020); and The Gallery @ Le Hangar Restaurant, Paris, FR (2019). Stewart’s work has been included in group exhibitions held at Hakuna Matata, Los Angeles, CA, US (2023); Emalin, London, UK (2022); Neuer Kunstverein Wien, Vienna, AT (2021); Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY, US (2021); Misako & Rosen Gallery, Tokyo, JP (2021); and Piktogram Gallery Warsaw, PL (2019).
