BASEL.-Emil Michael Klein (born 1982) is this year’s winner of the Manor-Kunstpreis Basel 2008 (Manor Art Prize Basel). Klein first learnt traditional wood carving, and subsequently studied in Basel. The artist works in the mediums of drawing, printing, painting even extending his scope to sculpture. His hand-carved frames and image carriers wrestle with the theme of the classical framing of a picture – and therein with an extension of the notion of painting.

The carved wooden objects created for his exhibition in the Museum für Gegenwartskunst demonstrate Klein’s impressive talent for spatial intervention and composition. He simultaneously unites classical handicraft with modernist, formal demands. As a central figure Klein has constructed a deep set free standing wall – the wooden object – which evokes a dialogue with the architecture of the space. Pictures, watercolours and objects stand in reference to it. Klein stretches the two-dimensionality in his works through a play between overlappings, surfaces, and transparency – and in so doing its own language of objects is developed.

Emil Michael Klein’s drawings move between collages and abstract watercolour paintings, which are worked in Indian ink, lacquer or felt-tip pen. The drawings’ colourful, seemingly playful appearance creates a light in contrast to the formal, in part minimalist, images and objects. The virtuoso handling of material, form and colour donates a fresh, uninhibited and poetic impression of Michael Klein’s works.