Carla Klein at Tanya Bonakdar - Brief Article

Art in America, June, 2002 by Max Henry

Globalization is synonymous with airy modern airports bustling with travelers. When devoid of people, these enormous public spaces take on a character that can be both imposing and uncanny. In her second New York solo show, the Dutch (Rotterdam-based) painter Carla Klein used an oil and enamel palette of aqueous blue-green, off-whites and grays to effectively portray the spatial dynamics of these and other functional spaces, taking a painterly approach to their modernist architectural forms.

An untitled diptych (each panel 88 by 59 inches) shows a long view of an airport atrium with escalators and a domed ceiling, while a large four-panel work shows an interior detail of a terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. In the latter painting, we see a glass dome rendered in a geometric grid of triangles and the pale clouds above. In the front gallery, two modestly sized works, J-peg and J-peg 1 (both 2001), employ a loosely painted array of dashes, drips, squibs and lines to depict small airplanes either landing or taking off. These aviation pictures verge on abstraction, while their titles suggest that Klein incorporates computer technology into her artistic process.

Moving to a different type of architectural environment, another big painting (about 7 by 12 feet) in the main gallery (the large works are all untitled and dated 2001) showed what looks like dessert cakes laid out on a countertop in domed display cases. In actuality, it's a painting of a photograph of a model of Norman Foster's proposed redesign of Wembley Stadium in London. The image is framed letterbox-style with a wide band of black across the top and deep aqua on the bottom, which gives it a distinctly cinematographic feel. The central image of model and tabletop surface is painted in moody shades of aqua and off-white as if seen through a filtered camera lens.

Fascinated by effects of scale and the creation of ideal spaces, Klein is a kind of virtual architect. Even though they are often based on real buildings, her images seem oddly disconnected from the world at large. Especially in her airport paintings, which hum with the whir of automation and industry and yet are devoid of people, the work is filled with strange, sci-fi overtones.