Long-Sharp Gallery and John Szoke Gallery (both located in Midtown Manhattan’s Gallery Building on 57th Street) presented the first solo exhibition in nearly a decade for NY-based Sabina Klein.

Sabina Klein is a master printer and an accomplished printmaker and painter in her own right: the different disciplines inform each other in her often large scale works on paper.  Her intimate knowledge of the effects different surfaces can have on the emotional content of a work, the way paint can create greater depth on one paper or narrow that distance on another is integral to her signature interplay of representational and abstract imagery. In her most recent works, abstraction takes precedence, yet there is always a connection to the figure, however muted, under layers of thinly applied paint. There is sensitivity and intelligence at work here, each painting anchored to a reality, even as we float freely between foreground and background, center and edges.  Nothing is unmoored; each mark, each figure has purpose and meaning, an emotional charge.  Her palette is clear, relying on highly nuanced primary colors, played off against neutrals, ranging in intensity from soft to dramatic.  These paintings are atmospheric and complex.  Upon reflection, one also feels the faint echo of her early years studying in Paris, the whisper of Picasso and Chagall, the heartbeat of the Paris of our dreams, made fresh by contemporary language and a finely honed vision.  Each painting here is connected, yet distinct. Klein’s language is highly developed and thoughtful enough to provide a mere hint, a reference point.   Solace and Eyes Wide Open are provocative enough to gain us entry and no more:  we need to bring our own sensibilities into the fray, spending time looking in order to see.

Klein (New York, 1949) studied with S.W. Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris.  She has printed for Krishna Reddy, Louise Nevelson, Al Held, Peter Milton, Larry Zox, and Richard Haas, among others.  She taught at Parsons School of Art and Design and the New School for Social Research.  She lives and works in New York.  Her works are in the collections of The Flint Museum, The Housatonic Museum of Art, and The New York Historical Society, among others.