Christina Klein
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Artist Statement
My work begins with the meditative process of playing with materials. Before I start a painting, I quilt together fabric, thinking about how the lines will interact with the composition, and if the shadows from the quilt will tell its own story. I am drawn to different textures in fabric, finding materials with geometric patterns that create an embossed image on the painting surface. These textures and seams inform where I make marks and bring together different ideas.
Three dimensional elements are also an increasingly important element in my portfolio. All of my projects contain materials that I have collected. I have ripped up floorboards from a house before it was torn down to make canvas stretchers and sculptures. I’ve also collected wood from a jobsite that was bulldozed for construction, using a chainsaw to cut the logs into workable pieces, then using the table saw to cut them into thin boards. Even the act of collecting used cardboard for sculptures is a form of brainstorming for me. The action of collecting gives way to the formation of new ideas. Each installation is inspired by a memory or physical location. I think about my creations in terms of building a house, albeit my work is recreated in abstract, fragmented pieces. Light plays a strong role in the final installation process. Using light to create long shadows helps illustrate walking through a house in disrepair.
Each part of my art making process builds upon the overarching narrative of loss and change. The imagery is a blend of real structures, ideas I developed through sketches and a collage of models I have built. The paintings and the models have come together, forging their own narrative with each other, where one idea fuels the next. I build my sculptures to look like my paintings, which in turn become still-lives for a new painting series. My work has a balance of controlled chaos. It is driven by domestic environments, whose sense of order has been pulled apart and left in abstracted fragments.
The creation of my current series is the culmination of my emotional connection to the subject matter I am researching. The now abandoned homes were once precious to the people who built them, lived in them, but are forgotten over generations. My goal is to create immersive work that engages the audience and allows them to interpret the meaning through their personal life experiences. Although my work is inspired by my Midwest community, it deals with themes that are universal.
Three dimensional elements are also an increasingly important element in my portfolio. All of my projects contain materials that I have collected. I have ripped up floorboards from a house before it was torn down to make canvas stretchers and sculptures. I’ve also collected wood from a jobsite that was bulldozed for construction, using a chainsaw to cut the logs into workable pieces, then using the table saw to cut them into thin boards. Even the act of collecting used cardboard for sculptures is a form of brainstorming for me. The action of collecting gives way to the formation of new ideas. Each installation is inspired by a memory or physical location. I think about my creations in terms of building a house, albeit my work is recreated in abstract, fragmented pieces. Light plays a strong role in the final installation process. Using light to create long shadows helps illustrate walking through a house in disrepair.
Each part of my art making process builds upon the overarching narrative of loss and change. The imagery is a blend of real structures, ideas I developed through sketches and a collage of models I have built. The paintings and the models have come together, forging their own narrative with each other, where one idea fuels the next. I build my sculptures to look like my paintings, which in turn become still-lives for a new painting series. My work has a balance of controlled chaos. It is driven by domestic environments, whose sense of order has been pulled apart and left in abstracted fragments.
The creation of my current series is the culmination of my emotional connection to the subject matter I am researching. The now abandoned homes were once precious to the people who built them, lived in them, but are forgotten over generations. My goal is to create immersive work that engages the audience and allows them to interpret the meaning through their personal life experiences. Although my work is inspired by my Midwest community, it deals with themes that are universal.
Christina Klein is a painter and sculptor from Fairview, Kansas. Researching and documenting the changes in rural communities is the focus of Christina’s current body of work, which begins with the meditative process of playing with materials. Canvases are sewn together using recycled fabric, mixing textures and creating shadows with the seams that stretch across the surface. She also uses recycled cardboard, fabric from couches and other sources to build soft sculptures that resemble domestic structures from homes, which builds upon the narrative of loss and change. Christina received her MFA from Florida State University and recently completed her Fulbright Fellowship at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg.