AMSTERDAM.- Annet Gelink Gallery is presenting Carla Klein's seventh solo exhibition at the gallery.
In her latest body of work, Klein created a new series of paintings that depict desolate urban sights during the Corona lockdown. Whereas her former work usually departed from a photograph, these paintings were made based on numerous and easily reproducible prints. Klein paints the world in the way these prints present it to her - her work is not painted from, but as print. What fascinates Klein is the way in which, in the present culture, prints and pictures shape our image of the reality.
The paintings in the exhibition that have the exact same size refer to the identically sized and therefore easily reproducible paper of prints. Klein not only transposes the image onto the canvas, but also the materiality of the print itself, such as the thin and easily wrinkled paper or traces of a printer out of ink, leaving scratches and lines on the surface. Every painting is made with a different shade of blue, allowing the characteristic shine of the ink to be transmitted onto the canvas.
Because of their shiny surface and their lack of depth, the images on the prints become tinny and flat. Similar to the consequences of the Corona measures, such as the curfew, lockdown and the closing of borders, the prints depict a world that is closed-off and unreachable.
Although her work reflects on the current times, Klein's paintings are never limited to one idea. Other than serving an opinion, the paintings' stories are woven into the material and ask for a specific, slower kind of attention. Using oil paint as her medium, her works form a kind of interaction between image, paint, depth and abstraction in which materiality and illusion constantly alternate.
Carla Klein (1970, Zwolle, The Netherlands) studied at the Koninklijke Akademie voor Kunsten, The Hague and the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2018), Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht (2018), Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2015) Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis (2014), The Granary, Sharon (2013), TENT, Rotterdam (2012), Kunsthal, Rotterdam (2011), Fifth Anniversary Lift Ticket, commissioned by The Aspen Art Museum and The Aspen Skiing Company, Aspen (2009), Exposorium, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (2009), World Class Boxing, Miami (2008), Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Schiedam (2008), Tulane University, New Orleans (2006). Several monographs were published on occasion of her solo exhibitions among which by 'World Class Boxing' Florida (2008), Newcomb Art Gallery, New Orleans (2006) and Jarla Partilager, Stockholm (2007)
