Martina Klein

The artist Martina Klein, born in Trier in 1962, lives and works in Düsseldorf. At a first glance her works are comprised of monochrome paintings, but Klein relates these to a room. Martina Klein does not hang her images on the wall, as it is typical in museums or galleries - she positions them in the middle of a room, leans them against pillars or walls or forms right angles with them.

Martina Klein: Untitled, 2011, oil paint, cotton, stretcher frame, courtesy Galerie Tschudi Zuoz, photo: FBM studio

Martina Klein admittedly sees herself as a painter, but, for her, painting always has also a spatial component. In the LehmbruckMuseum, her multi-layered works encounter the two-fold character of the street gallery, the inside and the outside, the street level and the slightly lower gallery floor. In between, in a sort of limbo: the spectators. By means of a new series of works Klein wants to seize on this situation and involve the floor. Her works are indeed not just plain paintings, there are always two sides: that of colour and that of construction. Front and back cancel out each other; in her works Klein lays bare her means of painting. "These means are my teammates", she says.

Through this reduction, this retreat of gesture, and the concentration on material, form, structure and colour, Klein also makes reference to the minimal art of the early 1960s, the countermovement to abstract expressionism. She does not conceal the construction of her work; it is on equal footing with the colour plane. "For me it is important that there can be an open perception, that visitors can read the works, that they can comprehend construction and materiality. By means of this disclosure I want to create presence."

As massive as this presence is in Klein's works, she does not tell any stories. Any kind of narrative is removed from the works - they press this point vehemently. The spectators are all the more important, they have to move - through the disengagement of the works from the wall, through their relationship to space and to nature - they have to actively make an effort in order to really see the works.