Breathing on Land marks Kimia Ferdowsi Kline’s third solo show with TURN Gallery. The new paintings, saturated with color and raw expression, are simultaneously concerned with intimacy and distance in human relationships. This body of work strikes an emotional tone ranging from total joy to melancholy wonder.


Archetypal elements of the natural world, such as water, fire, land and air, are used as metaphors to describe the encounter between our inner and outer worlds, our physical realities mirrored in our emotional states.


The built up surfaces of paint reveal a vulnerability and searching, with the forms often feeling carved out of the picture plane. One sees in each piece evidence of the underpainting, of what was covered over in order to arrive at the final image. Her economical mark making consistently searches for ways of effectively expressing the most basic essence in her forms, stripping them down of any excess information.


The paintings, both immediate and opaque, speak to the universality of the human experience and leave space for individual interpretation regardless of culture, background, language or race. Kimia Ferdowsi Kline defers conclusion in favor of imagination, and ultimately explores the most basic element of our survival on earth: love.


PRESS

Blouin Art Info, May 15, 2017