David Klein MRBS

David Klein

MRBS Carving through time

12 - 29 September 2017

‘to Lawrence and Tim - two extraordinary individuals.’

Front cover: Captive III (Struggle) - Portland - 75 x 45 x 50cm

‘Carving through time’ Why does the sign always read ‘Please don’t touch’, next to a sculpture in a museum, gallery, and even public space? This has always been a mystery to me. I cannot imagine this would have been in the Artist’s mind when they were creating their work.

It misses a massive opportunity.

Artists create work to communicate. They create work to engage, inspire, open minds, appreciate, escape into and out of.

For a stone carver, I would hazard a guess that one of the most simple and important responses to the work is the desire to touch it. For all my years in the art world, and working alongside contemporary sculptors, I have yet to discover one that doesn’t want and need for you to reach out and touch the pieces in their studio.

David Klein is a stone carver who, I feel, would notice if you didn’t want to touch his work. The only sign you will see during this exhibition is ‘Please touch’.

‘Carving through time’ captures David Klein at his very best. The essence of David’s work is to take one of the hardest, heaviest materials, and work with it respectfully, rendering the stone into something weightless, soft, and touching. A figure crouched, emerging out of stone, creates a beautiful feeling of tenderness; a bird, watching, waiting light as feather, the details suggestive and real. He uses the stone as part of the narrative, and often lets it dictate the flow of the piece. David may at first envisage a warrior’s head in the block of stone or marble, but as he carves, and carves, something quite unpredictable may start to form. The finished piece is in fact a captive figure, bursting out of the stone, nothing holding it back, energy raw and primal, and tactile beyond belief. If you dictate to the stone, and stop listening, the end result may well feel forced and trapped. David knows how to listen.

David is drawn to carve things with a beating heart. Living things. Be it the female form, the male form, horses, birds of prey, owls and heads. None take centre stage over another. All hold their own.

An extraordinary collection, by a remarkable man.

Sarah Macdonald-Brown 2017

Ancient Portland - 60 x 15 x 12cm

Arabian Portland - 50 x 45 x 14cm

Ballet Bathstone - 80 x 35 x 25cm

‘Bird of Prey III Portland - 100 x 38 x 42cm

Captive II (Taboo) Portland - 50 x 60 x 40cm

Classical Portland - 50 x 26 x 28cm

Contained VI Portland - 60 x 25 x 31cm

Elemental II Purbeck - 56 x 33 x 40 cm

Emergence VII Portland - 110 x 38 x 23cm

Emergence VIII Portland - 110 x 35 x 20cm

Emerging Back Bathstone - 58 x 28 x 10cm

Equus II Portland - 40 x 50 x 20cm

Equus III Bathstone - 80 x 45 x 25cm

Hidden Portland - 100 x 40 x 7cm

Lyric II Bathstone - 130 x 40 x 25cm

Moving Carrara Marble - 55 x 15 x 12cm

Nobility Opal - 80 x 26 x 26cm

Origin Carrara Marble - 50 x 20 x 16cm

Owl II Portland - 60 x 30 x 30cm

Punch Opal - 90 x 20 x 28cm

Slender Sienna White - 110 x 22 x 23cm

Solace III Portland - 30 x 45 x 30cm

War Horse III Portland - 45 x 60 x 25cm

BIOGRAPHY “Over the last twelve years I’ve had the good fortune to collaborate with Sarah and everyone at the Thackeray Gallery. It has been a real delight to show my work in this truly intimate space, from my first solo show in 2003 to my most recent in 2013.

During this time, I realise I have developed some distinctive themes - including figures struggling to emerge from the stone leaving much of the natural material unworked to create the tension between the said and the unsaid; through to the simplification of form.

In this work I have tried to refine the harmonies of proportion in a way to make the stone ring and sing.

Finally, with the masculine heads, I have been very influenced by the primitive African sculpture I saw in my childhood which feels so raw and true.

Working with my local limestone I have come to appreciate the material first hand, breathing the dust and gaining a real understanding of the individual nature of this material laid down 200 million years ago under the sea. It feels like carving through time and to reveal the beauty of this sedimentary stone is a real privilege.

I feel proud to continue within the figurative tradition, which I believe can connect us to our ancestors and hopefully will be intelligible to those as yet unborn.�

David Klein, 2017

THACKERAY GALLERY

EST.1968

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