Chris Kline’s paintings reflect on the medium’s histories and processes, its formal and material vocabularies, and its contemporary conditions. Whether they present horizon-like bands of nuanced colour, translucent woven surfaces, or the architectural framework of painting itself, they are celebrated for their formal grace, economy of means, and noted for their consistent engagement with issues of surface and support. Departing from the visual languages of mid 20th c. Abstraction— grids, fields, frames—Kline’s work seeks an opening where the implications of form, visibility, and facture unfold in questions about place, value, technique, and the limits of vision; a clearing where gesture, attention, and tradition coalesce in the present as Painting.
Born in Ontario, Chris Kline currently lives and works in Montreal. He attended Queen’s University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He has had various solo exhibitions at Diaz Contemporary, (Toronto, Canada), Galerie René Blouin (Montreal, Canada), Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, Canada), Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto (Canada), and Oakville Galleries, (Oakville, Canada). His work has also been featured in group exhibitions across Canada, at Century Gallery in London, UK and Galerie Der HBKsaar in Saarbrucken, Germany. Kline has been nominated to the RBC Painting Prize in 2005, and long-listed for the Sobey Art Award. His work was also featured in the 2011 Quebec Triennial. His work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, the Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal, and the Musée d’art de Joliette, Quebec, as well as private and corporate collections.
