Emily Kraus
Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce that an exhibition of new paintings by Emily Kraus will open at the gallery’s Tribeca location on April 11. Marking the London-based artist’s first solo show with the gallery and her first in New York, the presentation will run through June 13, 2026.
Kraus's large-scale abstract paintings pulsate with rhythmic energy. Embedded within them are the temporal and kinetic forces of their making; the expressive impact of her compositions evokes a unique process that is at once physically rigorous and contemplative. As such, her paintings reveal a strange and forceful harmony of form, resulting from the interplay between order and intuition, control and surrender, logic and spontaneity. Striations of vertical lines ripple through her compositions, serving as counterpoints to the wild sprawl of color that weaves across their surfaces. Vibrating with an eloquent stutter, the work reveals subtle modulations and sudden accents that echo repeated patterns found in nature: the cadence of breath, the ripple of waves, the markings of snakeskin. Exploring this idiosyncratic territory, Kraus’s works engage with the history of abstract painting, particularly the legacy of abstract expressionism and color-field painting, while speaking to and drawing upon facets of early photography and film, printing techniques, and musical composition.
Kraus’s methodology is rooted in her background in somatic and meditative practices. Inverting the traditional choreography of painter and medium, her process embraces a combative exchange between conscious and unconscious action. She creates her abstractions using a cube-like apparatus of her own design: a structure of stainless-steel struts that function as rollers, around which she loops raw canvas. Kraus works from within this cocoon-like enclosure, applying paint by hand, and as she pulls the material through the structure, the pigment smears and unfolds into evolving patterns. Inherent to the process are fluctuations of chance, which Kraus harnesses as a tool, calibrating it into a dialogue with her deliberate gestures. The resultant works are a synergy of opposing forces—organic and vigorous compositions shaped within a rigid device. Kraus’s relationship with her apparatus has evolved over time, allowing her to assert her hand with greater nuance and range. For her installation at Luhring Augustine, Kraus expands the scale of this practice, with paintings that stretch beyond the gallery walls, interrupting the architecture and drawing the viewer into a heightened physical and temporal engagement with the work.
Emily Kraus was born in New York in 1995, and lives and works in London. She received her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London, and a BA in Religious Studies from Kenyon College in Gambier, OH. Recent solo exhibitions include: 444 Days at Fondazione Bonollo in Vicenza, Italy (2024); A man and a woman and a blackbird at Galleri Opdahl, Stavanger, Norway (2024); Ouroboros at Galería Mascota, Mexico City (2024); and Nest Time at The Sunday Painter, London (2023). She has also been featured in numerous group shows, most recently: Nine Rules of Tremulation at Noname, Paris, France (2024); Patterns at Luhring Augustine, New York (2024); and Bloomberg New Contemporaries at Camden Art Centre, London (2024). Kraus was selected as one of The Artsy Vanguard 2025, is a recipient of the Hopper Prize, and was shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize.