ARTIST STATEMENT
The exchange of ideas between people has become contingent upon the consumption of images. My work investigates mass-media technologies and their influence on symbolism in contemporary culture and politics. From the 24-hour news cycle to memes, how does the adoption of images as fluid symbols affect our epistemology? In our consumption of images and rhetoric through the digital membrane of the screen, have we blunted our ability to distinguish a vestige of reality from the thing itself? This desire to believe what we see is foundational to the mechanics of misinformation. I utilize print-based processes in which compositions emerge somewhere between intention and errors in translation. The democratic nature of this medium appeals to reflections on the relationship multiples have with access and capital. I deconstruct images sourced from a mythologically idealized American past and troubled present.
Collaged together, new narratives emerge that subvert images from their original contexts to capture the prevailing sense of isolation and paranoia built into the mechanics of late-stage capitalism. Utilizing memetic formats, I examine post-modern modes of communication in a hyper-connected world of dynamic symbology, exploring the fallibility of photographic imagery and authenticity in the production of multiples. A visual language of marks reacting to found imagery pivots between clarity and ambiguity resulting in narrative relationships in the work that are largely dictated by what viewers psychologically project onto the work. Through this practice, I emphasize the ways in which we frame images in our biases rather than derive truth from them.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Annie Klein is an artist from Chicago, IL. Her prints combine the aesthetics of accumulation and biting humor to explore consumer culture and class politics in the Post-Truth Era. Klein’s work harnesses the reproducible nature of photography and printmaking to visually depict information entropy in infinite replication. Klein received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus in printmaking and fiber material studies in 2017 and an MFA in printmaking with a secondary focus in photography from the University of Iowa in 2024. She is currently based in New York where she is a visiting assistant professor of art at Colgate University.
© Annie Klein