David Klamen

David Klamen (born 1961) is an American artist and academic. He is known for visually diverse paintings that meld technical mastery with postmodern explorations of the processes by which humans understand and interpret experience.Hixson, Kathryn. "The Work of David Klamen,
''David Klamen''
Chicago: Richard Gray Gallery, 1996.Hersh, Lela. "David Klamen,
''Art in Chicago 1945-1995''.
Museum of Contemporary Art, ed. Lynne Warren, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996, p. 263. Retrieved May 16, 2018.Panczenko, Russell. "Interview with David Klamen," ''David Klamen: Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings'', Madison: Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004. Klamen has exhibited across the United States, Europe and Asia, including individual shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), the Chazen Museum of Art and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, and major group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Crocker Art Museum.Elvehjem Museum of Art. ''David Klamen: Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings,'' Madison: Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004. His work sits in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,The Metropolitan Museum of Art
David Klamen, ''Untitled'', 1994David Klamen, ''Untitled'', 1993
Collection. Retrieved August 31, 2018. the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary ArtIndiana University Northwest
"Notes of Distinction,"
''IU Northwest News'', November/December 2003. Retrieved August 29, 2018. and the Whitney Museum of American Art,Whitney Museum of American Art
David Klamen 1961–
, Collection. Retrieved August 31, 2018. among others. Klamen has been based in Chicago for most of his career, which includes being an educator for over thirty years, primarily at Indiana University Northwest, where he was appointed Founding Dean, School of the Arts in 2018.Indiana University Northwest
"IU Northwest announces new School of the Arts,"
''IU Northwest News'', August 8, 2018. Retrieved August 29, 2018.

Klamen has produced multiple distinct, ongoing bodies of work—often shown in tandem—that range from academic realist-like representation to Op Art-like abstraction to warped re-paintings of art historical masterworks.Richard Gray Gallery. "The Work of David Klamen," ''David Klamen'', New York: Richard Gray Gallery, 2001. ''Los Angeles Times'' critic David Pagel wrote that a Klamen exhibition could appear to be the work of as many as six distinct artists, yet display sharp focus and virtuoso painting across a constellation of styles, subjects and strategies.Pagel, David. "The Solo Show as Group Portrait: David Klamen's Multifarious Paintings," ''David Klamen: Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings'', Madison: Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004. He called Klamen "a master of the double take," using ambiguity to create epistemological doubt and curiosity in viewers. Critics and curators, such as Kathryn Hixson, have noted in his work an "oscillating relationship" between romantic and logical, subjective and objective; as a result they have often described it as sensuous,Artner, Alan G. "Show shines light on Art Institute graduates," ''Chicago Tribune'', September 11, 1986. nostalgic and wistful,Yood, James. "David Klamen, Richard Gray Gallery" ''Artforum'', October 1993. or meditative, mystical and eerily calm,Warren, Lynne. "David Klamen," ''A New Generation from SAIC'', Catalogue, Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1986, p.12–3. but also enigmatic and brooding,Taylor, Sue. "David Klamen at Marianne Deson Gallery" ''Art in America'', February 1988, p. 153–4. and uncanny and complex.Kuspit, Donald. "Sinister Beauty, or the Return to Pleasures of the Imagination: Five Illinois Painters," ''(un)earthly delights'', Springfield, IL: Illinois State Museum, 1996, p. 9.

Life and career

Klamen was born in 1961 in Dixon, Illinois, in the United States.IU Northwest Gallery for Contemporary Art, "David Klamen: Meta-Paintings," Exhibition essay, 2012. He initially studied medical illustration at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (BFA, 1983), but switched to fine arts and abstract painting.Kelly, Clark. "Dixonite's artwork travels world," ''The Dixon Telegraph'', August 8, 1992, p.17Garver, Thomas. "David Klamen,
''Mind & Beast: Contemporary Artists and the Animal Kingdom''
Wausau, WI: Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, 1992, p.42–7. He returned to representational work at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA, 1985), melding his regard for Minimalism, realist painting skills, and interests in hermeneutics and literature to develop a signature style: dark, highly varnished oil paintings of animals, landscapes and interiors, rendered with meticulous craftsmanship, such as ''Kings Knight'' (1986) or ''Untitled'' (1987, see right).McCracken, David. "Gallery Scene," ''Chicago Tribune'', January 1988.Holg, Garrett. "David Klamen, Richard Gray" ''ARTnews'', March 1997.

Klamen attracted art-world attention while still in school;McCracken, David. "Guided by head and heart, collectors do their homework," ''Chicago Tribune'', July 3, 1987, Sect. 7, p. 33.''Chicago Tribune''. "88 People to Watch in 1988," ''Chicago Tribune'', Style, January 6, 1988. he sold work, appeared in prestigious shows at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (1984) and Art Institute of Chicago (1985), and secured representation with the Marianne Deson Gallery in Chicago, where he later sold out his first two solo exhibitions.Hersh, Lela. "David W. Klamen," ''School of Art and Design Alumni Newsletter'', Urbana-Champaign: School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1990–1. Soon after graduating, Klamen began teaching at Valparaiso University, and then at Indiana University Northwest, where he would serve for more than thirty years. In 1986, he was selected for the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's "A New Generation from SAIC" show, and found himself with a two-year waiting list for new paintings, each of which took up to two months to complete from his loft-studio space in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood.Lautman, Victoria. "Artists in demand," ''Chicago Tribune'', Style, May 4, 1988, p. 2.Borden, Jeff. "Forty Under 40," ''Crain's Chicago Business'', September 1994. In 1988, he retained European gallery representation with Galleria L'lsola in Rome and sold out his first exhibition on opening night.

Klamen has shown at Richard Gray Gallery (Chicago, and later New York) since 1991 and also at Haines Gallery (San Francisco) and Mark Moore Gallery (Los Angeles).Kluck, Marielos. Interview, ''David Klamen: Statements'', Culver City, CA: Mark Moore Gallery, 2014. Prominent group exhibitions featuring his work include: "Mind and Beast" (Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, 1993); "Unpainted to the Last," (works Influenced by ''Moby-Dick'', Spencer Museum of Art, 1995–6); "Art in Chicago: 1945–1995" (MCA Chicago, 1996); and "(un)earthly delights" (Illinois State Museum, 1996).Yood, James. "David Klamen," ''(un)earthly delights'', Springfield, IL: Illinois State Museum, 1996, p.12–3. He has received reviews in numerous journalsCaruso, Rosella. "David Klamen, L'Isola" ''Flash Art'', Febbraio-Marzo 1989, p.115–6. and U.S. and international newspapers.Johnson, Ken. "David Klamen, Richard Gray Gallery" ''New York Times'', October 16, 1998.McDonald, Robert. "Five Young Artists' View of the Human Condition," ''Los Angeles Times'', February 22, 1986.Caruso, Bruno. "Roma, Verna e Klamen," ''Corriere Della Sera'', December 8, 1988.''Il Messaggero''. "Ventiquattro penelli tutti per la Capitale," ''Il Messaggero'', December 13, 1988.

Klamen is married to Dianne Lauble, Principal of Blue Fly Toy and a former Director of Design at Hasbro Toy Group.Haluska, Ilene
"Artist from Dixon returns: Professor will hold presentation at local gallery Friday,"
''Sauk Valley News'', June 10, 2010. Retrieved August 29, 2018.

Work and reception

Klamen's art can be strikingly eclectic, ranging from miniature to monumental, realistic to abstract, and meditative to aggressive.Weins, Ann. Review, ''New City'', March 11, 1999, p. 32. It is unified conceptually, rather than visually, by his investigation of various historical methods of creating meaning, such as empiricism, memory, abstract or rationalized systems like mapping and digital coding, introspection, and Eastern enlightenment practices like chanting.Stewart, Lorelei. Interview
''David Klamen: New Paintings''
Chicago: Richard Gray Gallery, 2007. Klamen brings together wide-ranging influences—Minimalist artists such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre and Walter De Maria, literary sources like Melville's ''Moby-Dick'',Schultz, Elizabeth
''Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth Century American Art''
University Press of Kansas, 1995, p.329-330. and the semiotic theories of Charles Sanders Peirce.Panczenko, Russell. "Foreword," ''David Klamen: Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings'', Madison: Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004. His work can be classified into five often-overlapping bodies: 1) Darkly varnished paintings; 2) Multi-canvas installations; 3) Watercolors; 4) "Stripe" paintings; and 5) "Meta-Paintings" and "Re-mixes."

Darkly varnished paintings

In 1985, Klamen began creating meticulous oil renderings of solitary, frozen animals (based on natural museum tableaux) and atmospheric, noir-ish landscapes based on memory,Klamen, David
"Landscapes"
Retrieved August 31, 2018. which he explored for their metaphorical qualities. He nearly obliterated these images with a layer of up to twenty coats of varnish,Hanson, Harry. "Mysterious ways," ''Chicago'', June 1993. distancing them under an impenetrable, dark sepia-toned gloss, like insects in amber.Holg, Garrett. "David Klamen, Richard Gray" ''ARTnews'', October 1993, p. 171–2.Yood, James. "Introduction," ''David Klamen'', Catalogue, Trento: Galleria Paola Stelzer, 1991. This slowed disclosure of the work, as viewers had to allow their eyes to adjust to the hard-to-decipher images.Richard Gray Gallery. "David Klamen: New Paintings," Exhibition materials, New York: Richard Gray Gallery, 2001. He complicated the work by overlaying symbols, shapes or lines (often in stark white) on the varnished surface or by inexplicably leaving key areas unvarnished—and thus surreally illuminated—creating what critic Donald Kuspit called an "ominous, unresolved, uncanny contrast." In the early 1990s, Klamen introduced similarly haunting, austere images of architectural interiors—Victorian lobbies, halls and staircases in museums and universities,Klamen, David
"Interiors"
Retrieved August 31, 2018. often featuring solitary, illuminated precious objects—with works such as in ''Untitled'' (1993, see left) that some critics felt were his most powerful to date.Weins, Ann. "David Klamen, Richard Gray Gallery" ''New Art Examiner'', February 1997, p. 44–5.Lynch, Kevin. "Artist Klamen's Slow Disclosures," ''The Capital Times'', December 17, 2004.

Critical response was often positive and vexed. James Yood experienced the paintings as puzzles, whose layers of distancing devices and contrary pictorial languages obscured, undermined and expanded the work's potential. He and others identified a cluster of interpretive possibilities: a paean to an Old Masters tradition still relevant; a critical "embalming" of painting; and a postmodern deconstruction of cultural representations of nature, history, art and experience, as well as traditional pictorial strategies.Yood, James. "David Klamen, Marianne Deson Gallery" ''New Art Examiner'', February 1988, p. 59.Hawkins, Margaret. "Looking beneath the surface," ''Chicago Sun Times'', December 6, 1996, p. 24–6. Dissenting critics sometimes expressed an uneasiness with Klamen's technical skill. Ann Wiens likened the paintings to supermodels: mesmerizing in "their surface grace and beauty, their uncanny perfection," but "perhaps, too flawless." Alan Artner acknowledged Klamen's ability, but later questioned whether his varnishing and unorthodox additions weren't ways to imbue academic realism with mystery and postmodern significance.Artner, Alan G. "Empty spaces," ''Chicago Tribune'', November 22, 1996.

Klamen introduced a related series in 1996: his "Daimoku" paintings, which overlapped illusionistic images of the Lake Michigan landscape with small, repetitive white dots, each an index or record of his touch and a symbol of one, repeated Buddhist meditative chant (" daimoku").Klamen, David
"Daimoku" work
Retrieved August 31, 2018. In some cases the dots form a grid or pattern over the landscape, as in ''Untitled (Daimoku Landscape)'' (2016); in others, they nearly obscure it, leaving two images to occupy the picture plane. Klamen sought to make this work "teeter on the edge" of various pictorial languages, in this case, Peirce's semiotic modes (iconic, indexical and symbolic) of representation, while also investigating painting as a process of enlightenment or self-knowledge, akin to meditation. In 2002, Klamen also extended his vocabulary, creating dark landscape drawings, made by erasing into a sheet completely covered in graphite.Klamen, David

Retrieved August 31, 2018.

Multi-canvas Installations

In 1996, Klamen began to exhibit salon-style, multi-canvas installations of two-dozen or more eclectic paintings that explored taxonomy as a method, while providing a new mode of expression through the intertextuality of the canvasses.Klamen, David
"Multi-canvas Installations"
Retrieved August 31, 2018.Nelson, James. "Huntsville museum offers best contemporary art show in a while," ''The Birmingham News'', Arts & Leisure, July 6, 1997. The individual paintings—often heavily scraped, sanded or repainted, with language fragments, indecipherable diagrams, thick smears of paint, or realistically rendered objects—were based on small, private memories, incidents or impressions that Klamen felt weren't fully formed enough to stand as individual artworks. He found that in concert they revealed surprises and formed wholes that David Pagel described as "multi-faceted, intimate panorama," in which reverie, intuition and dreaminess took precedence over rationality. Others critics observed that the installations revealed a playful side previously unseen in Klamen's work.

Watercolors

Klamen's watercolor paintings (1997– ) combined the salon-style format with his semiotic interests, examining the iconic representation of (most notably) landscape and the indexical recording of both his action and the bleeding of his materials.Klamen, David

Retrieved August 31, 2018.Van Laar, Timothy. "Index, Icon, Horizon," Exhibition essay, New York: Richard Gray Gallery, 1998.Richard Gray Gallery. "David Klamen: Index, Icon, Horizon," Exhibition materials, New York: Richard Gray Gallery, 1998. Taking advantage of the spontaneous flow of paint and ink with a wet-on-wet process, he created several dozen Rorschach test-like, postage-sized paintings, each with two or three strokes or a single drop, arranged salon-style on a single sheet. The tiny paintings read as believable landscapes and sunsets, evoking Klamen's deeply internalized memories of Midwestern lakes, skies, and trees, while also revealing how repetition, habit and the codes and conventions of landscape painting and ideas of nature can shape a viewer's experience.

"Stripe" paintings

In the "Stripe" acrylic paintings (1998– ), Klamen employed an optical strategy on par with the perceptual challenges of his varnished paintings, but in an almost diametrically opposed visual language.Klamen, David

Retrieved August 31, 2018. He fused two modes of visual coding—modernist Op Art and color-field painting with bar codes—in a system of high-contrast, pulsating yellow and black stripes (actually scannable for the paintings' titles). The stripes obscure recognizable 18th-century masterpieces, tourist vistas, and pornographic photos within them, creating works that oscillate between abstraction and representation as well as clashing cultural cues, such as ''Learning Nature 2'' (1998, exhibited at the MCA Chicago, which reproduces Frederic Church's ''Niagara''). Critics divided on them. Ann Weins found them consistent with Klamen's past work in their dueling visual strategies and layered commentary on history, artistic tradition, and visual obstruction. Margaret Hawkins called the work "a shocker," noting Klamen's slowing of disclosure to reveal the images' form, but mourned the "loss in beauty."Hawkins, Margaret. "Exhibits debate true beauty," ''Chicago Sun Times'', February 26, 1999, p. 52.

"Meta-Paintings" & "Re-mixes"

Klamen's "Meta Paintings" and "Re-mixes" (2009– ) feature paintings within paintings: carefully rendered "re-processings" of art-canon masterworks, depicted on exhibition walls (information tags included), often at oblique angles or in radically distorted form.Klamen, David
"Meta-Paintings."
Retrieved August 31, 2018. The "Meta Paintings" take liberties with color, scale, value range and composition, for example, using vantage point to impose diagonals on the flat horizontal and vertical harmonies of a Mondrian to problematize its absolutist purity of form, or obscuring Velázquez or Rembrandt images under layers of varnish that flatten them into dark, inky rectangles in gilded frames.Wainwright, Lisa. Catalog essay
''David Klamen: Painting Paintings''
Chicago: Richard Gray Gallery, 2010. The works are further complicated by the juxtaposition of illusionary shadows on the painted wall with real shadows, and by the multiple planes of illusionary and real space.Osberg, Annabel, "Recontextualizing Pieces of Art History and Scraps of Everyday Life," ''Huffington Post'', May 16, 2014. In the "Re-mixes," Klamen warped well-known works by Monet, Picasso, Sargent and others, transforming them into jarring images that suggest liquefaction, visually, and art history in a state of flux, conceptually. Klamen created both individual paintings and multi-canvas installations in this series. ''Untitled'' (Meta-Painting Multi-canvas installation), 2015, see right) is composed of 24 meta-paintings of masterworks prominently featuring blue that create what critic Lisa Wainwright called a "semiotic still life study" of disparate worldviews, aesthetics, and spatial illusions. She and other critics observed that the series both adulates and questions the signification of painting, engaging viewers with humor, while foregrounding context and perspective with regard to authority, authenticity, market value and intertextual associations.Hobson, Taylor. "Putting Art in Its Place: Recent Observations from "David Klamen: Painting Paintings" at the Richard Gray Gallery," ''Old Masters New Perspectives'', February 18, 2010.

Academic career

Klamen has worked in academia for more than thirty years, teaching painting, drawing, fundamental studio and art theory, and serving in various administrative capacities. He began as an adjunct professor at Valparaiso University in 1985, before accepting a tenure-track assistant professor position that fall at Indiana University Northwest (IUN). In subsequent years, he was appointed Associate Professor (1992), Professor (1996), and Professor of the University Graduate School, Indiana University (1998). In 2012, the university named him Chancellor's Professor, and he earned membership in Indiana University's Alliance of Distinguished and Titled Professors. He also served as Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and Chair, Department of Fine Arts.Indiana University Northwest
"A Respected Artist, Known the World Over, Teaching Our Students,"
''Indiana University Northwest News,'' June 27, 2014. Retrieved August 28, 2018. In 2016, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth appointed him Dean, College of Visual and Performing Arts and Professor of Fine Arts, and looked to him to reverse a longstanding trend of declining admissions in the school.Bosco, Eric. "UMass Dartmouth announces new CVPA Dean," ''South Coast Today'', July 7, 2016. Accessed March 2018. The pattern was turned around over a period of two years, with freshman enrollment and transfers rising by 58% and 22%, respectively, and new programs and the introduction of Social Practice art expanding the school's offerings.University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Office of the Provost. "David Klamen, Dean of the College of Visual & Performing Arts," Announcement. May 21, 2018. In 2018, Klamen returned to Indiana University Northwest and was appointed Founding Dean, School of the Arts.

Klamen has frequently lectured on topics including art fairs, beauty, art collecting, the history of art galleries in Chicago, and his own work, among others, at venues including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Humanities Festival, Art Chicago, MCA Chicago, and numerous universities.''Chicago Reader''
"Chicago Humanities Festival,"
November 7, 2002. Retrieved August 29, 2018.

Collections

Klamen's works are in numerous permanent public collections, including those of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Chazen Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
David Klamen, ''Kings Knight'', 1986
Collection. Retrieved August 31, 2018. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
David Klamen, ''Teaching Form II'', 1999
Collection. Retrieved August 31, 2018. Krannert Art Museum, Illinois State Museum, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea, Crocker Art Museum, McNay Art Museum, and City of Chicago,''culture NOW.'
David Klamen, ''Learning, Protecting (St-George and the Dragon'', 2004
Chicago Public Art Program. Retrieved August 31, 2018. among others.

References

External links

David Klamen, Richard Gray Gallery

{{DEFAULTSORT:Klamen, David

Indiana University faculty
21st-century American painters
21st-century American male artists
Artists from Chicago
American male painters
20th-century American painters
Painters from Illinois
1961 births
Living people
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign School of Art and Design alumni
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
Artists from Illinois
Culture of Chicago
20th-century American male artists