Reena Spaulings, New York Private Collection, Europe Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
London, Serpentine Gallery; Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Klara Lidén, October 7, 2010 - October 9, 2011
Catalogue Essay
The detritus of an urban landscape lies cloaked under a blanket of pristine white paper in Klara Liden’s Untitled (Poster Painting) from 2010. Bright yellows, faded blues and the frayed edges of jumbled old advertising posters gathered by the artist around various cities are piled one on top of another until the artist’s desired thickness is reached, and then they are then finally silenced by a monochromatic arte povera and minimalism-inspired sheath of calm. “The Poster Paintings archive the advertisements that intersperse, and increasingly encroach upon, urban life. Simultaneously reflecting on the waste inherent in consumerism and on societal values, while harnessing the possibilities of the materials employed, they engage the viewer and ultimately allow for an open-ended dialogue with the work” (Vaari Claffey, Rachael Thomas and Karen Sweeney, exh. cat., Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Klara Liden: The Myth of Progress, 2013-14). Like Andy Warhol and other pop, appropriation, and even conceptual artists before her, Liden has found a way to reinvent the re-purposing of pop culture items into a refreshing and hauntingly beautiful reminder of the undercurrent of rebellion and gross consumption of our culture today. Untitled (Poster Painting) is at once a souvenir of our past, but also a gentle reminder that the future is a blank canvas.
