Annet Gelink Gallery proudly presents Carla Klein’s (1970) fifth solo show from January 31st to March 07th 2015 at the gallery. Klein returns to Annet Gelink Gallery with a series of striking new paintings that display a new vision and direction for the Rotterdam-based artist. Exchanging her palette of muted tones of greys and blues, with the occasional dash of bright colour, Klein here presents a series of four large scale landscapes in a vivid array of red and orange hues.

Throughout her oeuvre Klein explores the relationship between reality and representation. Working from photographs taken and developed by herself, Klein creates paintings that depict abstracted landscapes and deserted, impersonal architectural spaces. Through painting, she approaches her experience of the captured image, even including ‘mistakes‘ formed during the development process. As such the paintings question how we hold on to our view of the world surrounding us, when this process is mediated by equipment such as cameras.

This question seems all the more relevant in light of the rise of social media that have popularized the sharing and taking of photographs. These streams of photographs present a vision of the world that is often heavily edited through digital colour filters. Referencing these filters, Klein layers colour over her photographed visions. These distortions, often the result of chance occurrences in the development process of the photographs, make for compelling landscapes that seem both alien and familiar.

copyright Annet Gelink Gallery, Carla Klein

Through the recurring motives in the paintings presented, Klein also highlights how our attachment to photographs has been altered with the constant influx of images through various media. With the presented works, Klein forces us to contemplate each single developed photograph and photographed landscape. Confronted with the imposing paintings, we search for the differences and similarities in the details of each. In painting, Klein subtly addresses how photography influences our understanding of authentic experience.

In the Bakery Annet Gelink Gallery is pleased to present the recently premiered documentary on Carla Klein, which is part of the series Hollandse Meesters in de 21e eeuw (Dutch Masters in the 21st Century). This series of short portraits focuses on Dutch contemporary artists, and follows them at work in their studio. The intimate portrait made of Klein, made by director Marc Schmidt, shows her working on the paintings displayed and reveals the process through which the final works appear on canvas.

ABOUT the artist

Carla Klein (1970, Zwolle, NL) is an artist who uses her own photography as a source material for her paintings. Starting with industrial sites she moves towards painting desert landscapes, which she had photographed during her travels. These landscapes are so monotonous that one might mistake the paintings as abstract. They never depict people, the only sign of human presence being that of fractions of traffic lights, the road ahead or parts of the dashboard. Yet the painter herself is always very much present in the picture.

Carla Klein studied at the Koninklijke Akademie voor Kunsten, The Hague and the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. Recent solo and group exhibitions include 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) and many other.

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).

Document from the official press release