TURN Gallery presents Kimia Ferdowsi Kline’s ​solo exhibition Elbow Room. In this recent body of work, Kline fuses painting with sculpture to investigate human intimacy and totemic histories. Made from discarded and salvaged wood gathered in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and upstate NY, Kline’s works investigate the ritual of starting over by retrieving objects that have pre-existing histories and building a relationship with them. Raised in an immigrant and refugee family, Kline has an intimate knowledge of feeling discarded and forming fresh beginnings. Newly realized works nod to both recent and distant pasts, transforming Kline’s pieces into a collaboration with time itself.


As a process based artist, Kline shelters rejected detritus, nurturing it for months. Notions of heroism in sculpture are repositioned through this quiet time of mothering the offended materials. Rather than forcing the works into what the sculptor wants, the moments shared with each piece ignite a transformation. Once the lumber has become familiar, Kline emphasizes texture with oil paint, wax, and pastels. Delicate add-ons fit perfectly into holes, whacks, divots, and cuts. Kline embraces rawness rather than hiding imperfection. Her sophisticated mark making appears both exploratory and refined, turning her scraps of wood into whimsical, figurative, and architectural stories. An overwhelming presence of family emerges and fades as you walk amidst the works, leaving space for individual interpretation. Ultimately, Kline’s work arrives at an intuitive place of stability, devotion, and balance. Both archival and newly born, the works build and transmit spiritual energy, and then pass it back and forth between object and viewer.


Kimia Ferdowsi Kline’s recent solo and two-person exhibitions include: Soulmate, 68 Projects Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2017); Waiting Outside, Marrow Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2017); Breathing On Land, TURN Gallery, New York, NY (2017); As Above, So Below, Elaine L. Jacob’s Gallery, Wayne State, Detroit, MI (2016); Landscapes For The Hungry, TURN Gallery, New York, NY (2015). Group exhibitions include: Feed the Meter Vol. 2, Ceysson & Bénétière, Luxemburg (2017); East Hampton Biennial, CANADA Gallery, East Hampton, NY (2017); We Might Not Have a Planet Left Soon, 68 Projects Gallery, Berlin (2017); Say Yes, Elaine L. Jacob’s Gallery, Wayne State, Detroit, MI (2017); The Intuitionists, The Drawing Center, New York, NY (2014).


In 2015 Kline was awarded The Basil Alkazzi Residency through The New York Foundation for the Arts. As an extension of her studio practice, Kline curates the art collection of Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn, New York. Kline holds an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute, CA, 2011, and a BFA from Washington University, St Louis, MO, 2008 (cum laude). She currently lives and works in Brooklyn.