Martina Klein, Volume

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition, entitled Volume, by German artist Martina Klein (*1962). The exhibition opens Saturday October 17 and will run until November 21.

Klein makes large monochrome canvases, which are most of the time not hanging on the wall in an 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 it self 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 canvases loose of the stretchers, so that they hang partly free form their support. This exhibition will show some examples of these free hanging canvases again but now partly covered in a wooden construction, which is part of the work.

Klein 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 Rijks-museum 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 and public institutions.