MUNICH, GERMANY.- The Monika Sprueth Philomene Magers Galerie presents the work of Astrid Klein. The exhibition, which covers works from the late 1970s and 1980s, includes photographic, sculptural and installation work. Photography has played a key role in Astrid Klein’s œuvre since the mid 1970s. Her approach to photography differs from the traditional documentary use of the medium: Astrid Klein uses photographic material taken from film, TV, advertising and journalistic texts, which she manipulates. She inverts colors, layers images, adds fragments of texts to the images or overexposes them.

Furthermore, text is another important medium, which the artist, who studied painting and sculpture, has employed in her work since the beginning of her artistic career. She uses language like a formal artistic medium, where text appears overlaying or selectively sedate in blocks and fragments.

Astrid Klein attempts to eliminate the viewers’ possibility to recognize familiar images: in doing this, she questions the viewers' perception. The observer, who is looking for empathetic reference points and memories in his perception process automatically, is led astray by a misconceived recognition of the aesthetic material, for example a film-still. Because the image in question does not represent a specific event, it can no longer be equated to its original composition but must be viewed as a timeless pictorial fragment.

The topics with which Astrid Klein deals with cover specific emotions and questions involving fear, force and terror. However she does not formulate these topics directly, as it is with the construction of the work that leads the viewer to these poignant topics. With the juxtaposition of assembled negatives, enlargements and the use of multiple exposures, the conception and purpose of the original image has all but disappeared. According to the artist this technique creates a quintessential emotive relationship between the picture and the observer.