Solo Show Carla Klein at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Sat, Jan 6 - Thu, Feb 15  2018

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Carla Klein, opening Saturday, January 6th and on view through Thursday, February 15th.

Klein’s seventh solo show with the gallery presents a series of expansive works depicting greenhouse interiors throughout Europe. The diverse body of paintings includes cool-toned studies of lush flora, complemented by fiery views of banana leaf trees, and a sleek spaceship-like heater that conjures some otherworldly landscape out of a science fiction novel. Across these canvases, works take the shape of timeless spaces, familiar but foreign, with sweeping perspectives evoking a spectrum of imagined memories from the Jurassic period and post-apocalyptic visions of the future.

Carla Klein, Untitled, 2017. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

Carla Klein, Untitled, 2017. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

About the exhibition

The large-scale and panoramic parameters of these works enable a psychophysical entrance into the surreal botanical perspectives. An essence of speed or motion is implied by the compositions’ unusually low vantage points and strong diagonal features. The sense of vast depth pushes into indeterminable and unarticulated backgrounds filled with shadows of things or empty space that you want to gain access into, in seeking details beyond the horizon line. These features lead the viewer immediately into Klein’s interiors, as if we were passing through the spaces ourselves. Tempering the illusion, the works’ abstract surface details bring awareness to the picture plane, reinforcing a barrier with the viewer, simultaneously acknowledging the painting as painting and painting as object.

This new body of work bears a strong conceptual affinity to Klein’s earliest paintings—human-made vessels that imitate the natural world; vitrines, terrariums, aquariums and swimming pools—all of which represent artificially contained environments. 

Carla Klein, Installation view. Photo Lance Brewer. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

About Carla Klein

Based in Rotterdam, Klein (b. 1970, Zwolle, the Netherlands) has presented major solo exhibitions at UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California (2006) and at Jarla Partilager, Stockholm, Sweden (2007), among other museums worldwide. Recent presentations include a solo project commissioned by the Aspen Art Museum and Aspen Skiing Company, Colorado (2009-2010), along with group exhibitions at Kunsthal Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2011) and the Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL (2011).