Almine Rech
Kimmel continues in the refinement of a certain sort of abstract painting. But that word seems uneasy, correct but subtly off. What sort of refinement is this, or elaboration, or even “study”— the anodyne quality of that word is deliberate. Kimmel is outside of fashion: not so much as a whisper of personal experience or life story, no appeal to identity, that skeleton key to all living myths and histories, omnipresent and deader than the Rev. Casuabon’s hopeless attempt to find the key to all mythology. But keeping within the conspectus of the Victorian novel, nothing is more perversely animated, more plastic with eldritch innovation, than what is dead: Dracula, Frankenstein, and a comically replete world of unquiet spirits. Kimmel would be uninterested in pursuing the Matisse idea of art, that beautiful armchair — but no one shirks Matisse, that’s just wrong and rude. But she doesn’t do that trip. Luxe, calme, et volupté — well Kimmel’s paintings have a luxurious quality, even a voluptuous one; but they’re very seldom calm.
through June 15, 2024