Astrid Klein
"Les tâches dominicales", 1980
("Sunday Work", 1980)
2 April - 3 May 2008 at Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers, London.
1 May at 7pm> Astrid Klein will be in conversation with Lisa Le Fevre

fig.: Astrid Klein 'Que reste-t-il...', 1980 Courtesy of the artist and Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers, Cologne Munich London. 

Astrid Klein (born 1951) manipulates the photographic medium by painting and installing it to revive the relationship between the photographic image and text. Her works are metaphors for the estranged personal self and its representation in society. Astrid Klein can be read in the tradition of feminist artists such as Barbara Kruger or Cindy Sherman, who started to express the burgeoning media culture of Western society in the 1970s.

The exhibition ‘Les tâches dominicales’ (Sunday Work) at Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers is her first solo show in Britain since 1989. The current show consists of a series of collage-based works Klein made in Paris in 1980. The title refers to the artist’s concept of making a collage every Sunday. Upon entering the exhibition you will be greeted by your own image: a large mirror, placed on the opposite wall, presents the visitors own reflection. This reflection is distorted since the mirror surface has been smashed so that your image becomes fragmented and estranged.

One of Astrid Klein's themes is the voyeurism of the male gaze and the fetishisation of the female body. By using techniques of cinema and the narrative structure of the comic strip Klein, who calls herself "a feminist by genetics", presents her perception of women in mainstream culture as it is at the time discussed by theorists such as Laura Mulvey. Klein’s work is characterised by the tension between meaning and language (visual and textual), a profound interest in the uncanny quality that underpins all forms of representation, and a deep passion for the poetry of the language.

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Key exhibitions: Astrid Klein, trained as a painter and sculptor, has participated in a number of key exhibitions, such as the important Von hier aus, D üsseldorf (1984), the 42nd Venice Biennale (1986) and Documenta 8 (1987). She took part in a number of major photography exhibitions, such as Photography in Contemporary German Art 1960 to the Present at the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis (1992), Photographie des 20. Jahrhunderts, Ludwig Museum, Cologne (1996) and Deutschlandbilder, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (1997).
Recently she has been included in major exhibitions on German history, including the RAF exhibition (Zur Vorstellung des Terrors. Die RAF Ausstellung, Kunstwerke Berlin, 2005), and the show Klopfzeichen, which investigated the relationship between East and West Germany in the 1980s (Klopfzeichen: Kunst und Kultur der 80er Jahre in Deutschland, 2002).
In Britain Klein’s work was included in a number of exhibitions in the late 1980s, such as a solo show at Gimpel Fils (1987) and the ICA (Astrid Klein: Photoworks 1984-1989) and the group exhibition Shifting Focus at Arnolfini Gallery and Serpentine Gallery (1989).

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