2009

A RECONSTRUCTION OF A RANDOM TIMELINE

INSTALLATION at TANYA BONAKDAR GALLERY, NEW YORK

SEPTEMBER 10 – NOVEMBER 24, 2009

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is very pleased to present A reconstruction of a random timeline, an epic series of dynamic new paintings by Carla Klein. For her fifth solo exhibition with the gallery, Klein continues her exploration of the relationship between photography and painting and the layers of mediation involved in both creating and interpreting images. Emphasizing the inherent flaws in any representational process, Klein’s paintings offer their own compelling and authentic visual experience, one that pushes the original image towards abstraction while maintaining a very direct relationship to its source. Using her own photography as a point of departure, these painterly renderings become real objects far enough removed from their subjects that they take on new and different meanings. The resulting exhibition is an immersive 360-degree panorama of grid-like compositions that altogether pushes the artist’s practice, in her words, to “create a form of painting where contradictions and oppositions are accommodated and merge into one overall result.”

With a vocabulary well established in the artist’s past work, Klein’s paintings continue to reference the mechanics and materiality of the photographic process. White frames on the canvas reference the edges of printed photo paper; scratches and chemical reactions take form as brushwork. Here, however, the artist has shifted from the large individual photographic print to incorporate the more contemporary experience of scrolling through endless series of thumbnail images on digital screens. Klein’s small canvases, installed in grids throughout the gallery, reference the explosion of random imagery that has resulted from the accessibility of digital technology, and explore how we have become further removed from the authentic experience these images portray by their sheer quantity. While these works take the multiplicity and repetition of the contemporary visual world as a starting point, they simultaneously transcend and transform their subject matter.