Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present Chris Kline’s first exhibition with the gallery. Kline combines understated materials with subtle visual mechanisms to produce works that are complex and expansive. In this series, as in previous works, Kline reveals the architecture of the painting, emphasizing both frame and image; structure and surface. The idea of painting as both action and object is nuanced, as the language of modernist abstraction convolutes to accept new meaning.
The soft colour variations, visible borders and markings of these paintings can evoke certain experiences of vision and materiality as well as historical painting genres, while at the same time lingering on the threshold of abstraction's boundless space. We have access to an exploration of the processes involved in the physical form of a painting, and are encouraged to re-visit the definitions of the inside and the outside of a work of art..
The Dividers lie between systematic hard edge composition and an indeterminate sensuousness, a contrast set up by the geometric forms that appear on the edges of hazy colour fields. The paintings refer to themselves as well as their surroundings in the language of light, shadow, layers and space. The material characteristics of the painting and the canvas resemble aspects of the gallery space and vice versa – a corner, a ray of light, a shadow on an interior wall. Moreover, the translucent poplin surface calls our attention to the act of looking, simultaneously concealing and revealing, supporting or creating space.
Born in Ontario, Chris Kline attended Queen’s University (B.A. Honors) and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His recent solo exhibition, Bright Limit, organized by Oakville Galleries is now touring at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Kline has been a semifinalist in the RBC Painting Prize, and long-listed for the Sobey Art Award. His work was also featured in the 2011 Quebec Triennial. His work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, the Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal, and the Musée d’art de Joliette, Quebec, as well as private and corporate collections. He currently lives and works in Montreal, and is also represented by Galerie René Blouin.
  
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