Astrid Klein first became known in the 1970s for her large-format, black-and-white ‘photoworks’ [Fotoarbeiten] and expansive installations, created in a complex process that involves combining found images and textual material with painted and drawn elements.
Developed over more than four decades of artistic practice, her oeuvre also encompasses paintings in black and white, collages, neon sculptures, mirror works, transparencies and early text-based images [Schriftbilder].
Through her art, Klein seeks not only to visualise and undermine dominant power structures and representational mechanisms, but also to dismantle them and to destabilise conventional imagery.
Purity and elegance are coupled with a seismographic sensitivity for critical contemporary issues, such as the role of women in society or notions of success and failure, as well as broader themes of remembering and forgetting, time and transience.
Reflecting her wide-ranging interests in literature, film, philosophy, perception theory and neuroscience, Klein's artworks open up aesthetic and intellectual realms for viewers to experience and explore.
[9] Astrid Klein's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at museums and art institutions, most recently at the Falckenberg Collection/Deichtorhallen, Hamburg-Harburg (2018); and at The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2017).