E. Andrea Klann: Such Stuff as Dreams

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E. Andrea Klann, "Such Stuff as Dreams," 2018

It is a twist of Klann’s subconscious mind that the title of the exhibition Such Stuff as Dreams is taken from the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone, The Tempest; set on a remote island where the lead character, the sorcerer Prospero, engages in ‘art’ and theatrical illusion.

Prospero engaged in illusion to restore his familial ties, whereas Klann endeavors through paint, brush and canvas to present a sense of the real and imagined world that her imagination inhabits.

Klann’s interiors are studies of time, memory and place as she navigates between layers of reference and symbolic meaning. There is a contemporary, theatrical quality; the flat perspective of the composition arranged to focus the viewer’s attention. Her work often draws inspiration from her photographs taken of period interiors, with recurring tropes of well-worn couches and glittering chandeliers that hint at lives lived yet echo that all that glitters is not gold - there are rumblings under those chandeliers suggesting otherwise.

Her figurative works present the gaze of the figure as direct, a point of human contact that cuts through any social barriers or limitations to inspire a connection between figure and viewer. The gaze is a conceptual keystone of any attempt to answer what makes us human. Yet as Klann’s figures are often invented, they take on an illusionary, unpredictable nature all their own. In Girl in Mask even the Surrealist iconography of the mask cannot obscure the gaze of the figure within.

Klann’s exteriors are familiar worlds yet harbor elements of the unexpected. Orbs, spheres of light seen in photographs taken in haunted locations and believed to be the true form of spirits or the soul, float languidly as small boats drift – the latter carriers of human and spirit cargo. In Seventy Miles from Homeand At Sea fog shrouds the horizon suggesting the past is opaque and the future is unknown.

Both Prospero and Klann have lived on an island for twelve years, far from the bustle of humanity Klann strives to create paintings that connect; that capture human emotion and evoke an emotional response in the viewer. Her earlier work explored confinement; influenced by the saltimbanque, the carnival and Commedia dell’Arte, the frequent saltimbanque figure an avatar for memories shared by her father, a conscripted child-soldier and Polish-German POW.

Klann‘s work is indirectly influenced by painting heroes of their genres; Symbolist (Redon, Chagall), Magic Realism (Leonora Carrington) and Realist (Antonio Mancini) painters.

“Much of life is a divine tragicomedy: farcical, often surreal yet occasionally mundane. If, as an artist, one can provoke a sense of wonder at this life, at humanity and the human condition, then one has achieved a measure of success.” – Andrea Klann

This is Such Stuff as Dreams.