Ivory Black, Deep Orange Yellow. Carla Klein shows Klein's large oil paintings filled with emptiness, conveying a world that feels abandoned. She searches a certain anonymity in monotonous landscapes. 'I prefer to be able to look into the distance, as far as possible'. Klein explores the interplay between digital and analog mediums, probing the complexities of image creation and interpretation. Drawing from her own photos, transitioned from negative to snapshot to canvas, her landscapes take on new meanings, detached from their origins. Her works aren't reproductions but interpretations, shedding light on how contemporary visual culture shapes our perception. The release of this Monograph coincides with her first solo museum exhibition in the Netherlands at KM21 in The Hague. Klein exhibited numerous times nationally as well as internationally, and has received multiple scholarships and prizes.
‘space that exists, but that you cannot reach' as described by Carla Klein. Anyone standing in front of the paintings undergoes a similar experience. In a virtuosic, figurative style, the spatiality of a landscape or city is evoked, in which you, as a viewer, want to be absorbed. But at the same time, there is the reality of the material, and this contradicts the illusion. The eye is confronted with a membrane of paint. Smudges caused by rubbing the paint and streaks of paint drips float above the illusion of the realistic landscape like an abstract layer. The painting carries multiple realities, they exist alongside each other, in each other. - Jannie Regnerus
