Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition Permanent
Changes with new works by German artist Martina Klein. The exhibition will
open Friday September 2 during the Opening of the Gallery Season in
Amsterdam and will run until October 8.
Martina Klein makes large monochrome canvases, which are most of the time
not hanging on the wall in a usual way but stand against the wall or stand
free in space, like an object. According to Klein the composition is not made in
the painting itself but occurs in the space, within the relation of other
paintings. The various monochromes make a choreography of color planes
that defines the space and gives it character.
Klein builds up her painting with several layers of self-made recipes of paint.
Adding more pigments to the oil, gives the painting a radiant effect. Her
specific use of colors and the way of painting gives her work an extra quality.
Recently she cuts the painted canvases loose from the stretchers, so that they
hang partly free form their support. This exhibition will show some examples
of these canvases. Three groups of nine paintings, in three colors each, are
standing on tables of different height. As a group they perform as a body of
color, catching the light from different angles. The public is invited to change
the location of each painting, for example to hang one on the wall or put it on
the floor. So, the installation can change permanently. In addition, also an
edition of narrow strips of painted canvas will be shown.
Klein, born in 1962 in Trier (DE), lives and works in Düsseldorf, where she
had her first solo exhibition at Konrad Fischer Galerie. Nowadays she regularly
exhibits at Galerie Tschudi in Zuoz (CH) and at Slewe Gallery. In 2004 she
had an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede. In 2009 she
showed at Kunstraum Alexander Buerkle in Freiburg and in 2012 she made an
installation with her works at the LehmbruckMuseum in Duisburg, on which
occasion a catalog had been produced. Her works are collected internationally
by both private collectors and public institutions.
