Jérôme Poggi is pleased to present
Seffa Klein’s first exhibition in Europe (born in 1996, in Phoenix, Arizona), and to introduce this event with a unique and exceptional dialogue featuring works by
Yves Klein,
Rotraut,
Marie Raymond, and
Günther Uecker, who are her grandparents, great-grandparent, and great-uncle respectively.
Born in 1996 in Arizona, Seffa Klein is now one of the most followed young artists on the West Coast of the United States, according to an Artnet interview dating 2019. Since 2017, she has been creating works on glass canvas using not paint, but bismuth, which she ignites to bring out its colors, playing with the iridescence of this metal and its symbolic, if not alchemical, significance. More than purely abstract, these are works that represent cosmic energies or geometric systems based on a sacred mathematics governing the laws of the universe. Passionate about science, particularly mathematics and chemistry, Seffa Klein fuses purely conceptual and/or spiritual, even meditative, methods with a profoundly manual and physical practice: playing with fire to transform matter in its form and internal organization, drawing and sculpting in molten metal, sometimes combined with plaster, immolating flowers, and congealing plants within the concretions of cooled metal.While resolutely turned towards the cosmos, Seffa Klein’s work is equally rooted in the natural, mineral, plant, and animal worlds.
Like many artists today, in the age of the Anthropocene, and even more so in a hoped-for
Symbiocene, Seffa thinks of art beyond the human sphere alone, conceiving it in relation to plants, by incorporating orchids in her sculptures, and to animals, through the design of ponds or adorned architecture for fish. Seffa Klein’s work thus inscribes itself, at once, in a history of abstraction rooted in cosmology, spiritualism, and esotericism on one side (from Hilma af Klint to Yves Klein), and in science, mathematics, and chemistry on the other (from František Kupka to Ólafur Elíasson), as well as in the life and environmental sciences.
Her work has been featured in several group and solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, including at
Wilding Cran,
Huntington Beach Art Center,
Ochi Projects,
Amber Hills,
Berkshire Botanical Garden (Stockbridge, MA), etc.
For any direct inquiries, do not hesitate to get in touch with: Jérôme Poggi (j.poggi@galeriepoggi.com)