Articles / Reviews
She, Her and Me
Artists like Justine Kurland stage dreamy but laden scenarios in which her subjects faux innocence invites violation. For Klein, absence is more a fact than a lack, and looking is not the same thing as penetration. (When I think of feminine writing, I think of a wildness ... a willingness to be more than one thing, to channel multiple streams of information on a very deep level.)
Klein's most recent series Le Desir (2007) substitutes her own form for the mannequin. Wearing a blonde Marilyn wig and a slightly flared knee length cotton skirt, she embraces the most skeletal empty form of a male mannequin. Her lover is no more than a dark suit and a hat. Barefooted, she dances with him against a white studio backdrop, the two casting deep shadows. The prints have the gorgeous large porous grain of old black and white movies. They're at once funny and ghostly and deeply romantic.