Both illustrate the fundamental importance of collage to Klein’s practice, the versatility of her thinking, and her innovative reinterpretation of the image, particularly through the incorporation of text. At the same time, these works are a testimony to the artist’s intellectual acuity and the lasting relevance of the themes she addresses – Klein’s dialog with social and political developments, her questioning of prevailing power structures, and her exploration of topics such as the construction of identity, are as relevant today as ever.

Astrid Klein, one of Germany’s most distinguished conceptual artists, has played a crucial role as European counterpart to the American Pictures Generation since the late 1970s and is considered a female pioneer of large-scale photography. In her multilayered works, she combines artistic source material drawn from philosophy, literature, political discourse, and film to establish fresh links of meaning.

Entering the gallery, visitors encounter well-known faces: the glamorous women of 1960s and 1970s French New Wave and Italian cinema. Klein has detached them from their original context in film and mass media and merged them into new pictorial worlds by overlaying them with text fragments, adhesive tape elements, and pen markings. The process results in photographed collages, so-called photoworks, all shown for the first time in the US.

The women depicted are distinguished by their sensual femininity and erotic appeal. Many played female leads in culture-defining films, often performing as objects of desire but, above all, portrayed as sexually emancipated characters. Klein’s photoworks deliberately emphasize this paradoxical characterization, but also the women’s inherent strength.

Klein challenges conventional modes of perception. Her motifs instinctively captivate us, while also making us complicit with the male gaze upon the female body. These 1970s photoworks therefore reflect the shifting perspectives of that time, influenced by the second-wave feminist movement. Yet the artist does not admonish; she rather shows by skillfully utilizing ubiquitous, fundamental elements of societal constructs to draw attention to facets of the human experience. In a highly sensual manner, Klein employs her deeply conceptual approach to unveil hidden structures.

Drawing inspiration from artists such as Agnes Martin, Piero Manzoni, and Robert Ryman, Klein extends their minimal approach and combines white-on-white painting with textual elements, tape, and, in some cases, silver-colored foil that acts as a mirror of sorts – an unreliable one that fails to return a steady reflection. The resulting nuanced layers imply depth that echoes the intricacies of cognition, perception, memory and forgetting. Like an orchestrated collection of fragmented thoughts, these works persistently confront us, inviting us into a moment of ambiguity and contemplation where unanswered questions intertwine with the imagination.

Also painted with alabaster, the canvases evoke a sculptural dimension, essentially demonstrating that the artist conceives her works not in a two-dimensional but in a three-dimensional, spatial manner. In Untitled (tragicmagic) (1988–93), for example, painted shapes resemble a curtain that merges into the white background, an invitation to imagine a space beyond.