Carla Klein

Carla Klein (1970, Zwolle, The Netherlands) lives and works in Rotterdam. Klein uses her own photography as source material for her paintings. Her preoccupation has always been with real things: how they are represented, shown, and painted. Early photographic work made during a residency at the Rijksakademie in 1994 gave her access to a darkroom, where she developed her own color prints. Hours spent there produced formative discoveries: off-kilter frames, chemical stains, accidental scratches. "The painting begins in the darkroom," she has said.

Her subject matter explores empty streets, open vistas, and desolate architecture: spaces unwelcoming to humans, such as airports, the Utah desert, and regions above the Arctic Circle. The absence of figures allows Klein to inhabit these landscapes as an artist, improvising passages of wind-blown clouds, testing semi-opaque white layers, reacting intuitively to the painting's surface. In recent works, Klein layers analogue photos, test strips, and digital printouts into composite images with multiple textures — incorporating a negative holder as an abstract structural element through which photographic imagery can play against painted surface.

Klein studied at the Koninklijke Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, The Hague (1988–1993), and completed a residency at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (1995). She received the Jeanne Oostingprijs for painting in 2025.

Solo exhibitions include Close Distance, KM21, The Hague (2024); Carla Klein, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2022); Carla Klein, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2018); Carla Klein, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2015); Carla Klein, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2010); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis (2009); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2008); Fifth Anniversary Lift Ticket, commissioned by The Aspen Art Museum and The Aspen Skiing Company, Aspen (2005); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2004); Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2003); World Class Boxing, Miami (2002); Carla Klein, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2001); Jarla Partilager, Stockholm (2001); Scape, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2000); Carla Klein/Matrix218, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley (1998); Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (1998); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (1996).

Group exhibitions include The M-Collection, Murals Inc., Rotterdam (2026); Alles Stroomt, Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht (2025); Schilderkunst nu. Hoogtepunten uit de kunstverzameling van ABN AMRO, Singer Laren (2018); Biennial of Painting 2016 Yoknapatawpha, Museum of Deinze (2016); Landscapes after Ruskin: Redefining the Sublime, Hall Art Foundation, New York (2016); SKY! — in Dutch Art since 1850, De Hallen Haarlem and The Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (2014); Dolf Henkes Prijs 2012, TENT, Rotterdam (2012); I Promise to Love You, Caldic Collectie, Kunsthal, Rotterdam (2011); Vanishing Point, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2007); Oponthoud/Delay, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2006); Painting as Paradox, Artist's Space, New York (2002).

Works by Klein are held in the collections of Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California; Miami Art Museum, Miami, Florida; and Scheringa, Spanbroek, The Netherlands.