Annet Gelink Gallery is proud to present the second solo exhibition of Dutch artist Carla Klein (1970). It has been exactly two years since her last exhibition at the Annet Gelink Gallery. Now for the first time she will be showing photographs in addition to her paintings. Klein's paintings strike a balance between figurative work and abstraction, with images that seem both visible and invisible, meanings that come and disappear.
The new series of paintings shows the interiors of metro stations as well as landscapes seen from trains and boats, so that the notion of appearance and disappearance is literally converted into action. As your eyes gaze at the landscapes they continue to explore the paintings, seeing the painted canvas as one big space in which foreground and background are undefined. This is partly a result of the rough brush strokes and the carefully limited palette. Even on the canvases depicting architectural spaces, Carla Klein manages to bring the painting past a point in which the view slips from the painter's grasp and a space is opened where the observer can lose himself. When looking at the large canvases - more than three metres in length - this experience of getting lost in space becomes almost physical.
It is a well-known fact that Klein usually uses photography as the point of departure for her paintings, but never before have her photos been shown as autonomous works. The photos in the exhibition have a direct connection with her painting because they have served as the basis for a number of the paintings on show. They are colour photographs of seascapes with a great deal of sky and water, primarily in grey-blue tints. Carla Klein has incorporated her photos in light boxes so they become spatial objects that are able to evoke a tension between three-dimensional and two-dimensional space, a tension that can be felt in her paintings as well.
From August 28 through November 7, the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum is showing the work of Carla Klein from the museum collection in the exhibition Oponthoud.
Carla Klein
Past exhibition