Painting

Like Kleinfeld’s sculptures, his paintings have for many years been austere and restrained in appearance. The early adoption of a practice that leaves the canvas uncoated, showing the bare fibres of linen, hessian and cotton, goes hand in hand with a usually monochrome or severely limited colour scheme. The content of the works follows the same concerns as the sculptural, text or even video works. There is a strong educational element found within them which at times is directly lifted from school books or other scientific or statistical illustrations. The effect produced by the physical materials of the works as well as the style in which they were executed gives them their particular aura of timelessness.

Although their subject matter appears humble and like from some undefined decade from the 20th century, the complexity and themes present in the work are of universal nature and of acute importance to humanity in the post-industrial age. The works reference recent political events, technical innovations or the media age despite their deceptively aged appearance. Like all works of the artist, they are about existence, health, ageing and death, and about taboos and the complex nature of human relationships.