ARTIST STATEMENT

For many years I have immersed myself in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and through his stories I explore moments of transformation, moments of chaos when all is in flux and new forms are born. This work is about the processes of change in all of us. We take a leap, grow wings, escape one life, emerge into a new self.

I paint in oils and also work in mixed media on paper, using various combinations of pastel, color pencil, inks, watercolor cyanotype and collage, building layers of color, texture and dream. In 2015 I began to work in three dimensions, creating ephemerally light vessels composed of thin paper layers and drawing fragments bound together with medium. These have evolved over the past few years into large and small-scale sculptures, many of which incorporate organic elements.

Nature is a constant source of material. Several series, for example, WILDFLOWERS and BLOSSOMS OF LOSS AND DESIRE, are based on plants, especially orchids, which evoke many aspects of the human body and become a point of departure for my imaginary hybrid forms. In other series I have explored transformation and flux in the indigenous myths of the Amazon (MIRAR/MIRROR), and in the beliefs and spiritual practice of the Utes (Nuche), native to the Colorado area (REMAINS TO BE SEEN). The mixed-media pieces in REMAINS TO BE SEEN emerged from my summers in the Colorado mountains. This work is imbued with a universal reverence for the spirits and memories contained in physical remains: skulls, bones, bark, snakeskin. From the “writing” of beetles on bark to the impressions of mushrooms onto paper, I make visible the silent messages of the Colorado mountain landscape.

My most recent work incorporates these physical remains along with other scavenged material. NIGHT BOATS is a series of mixed-media sculptures expressing the dislocation and migrations of my family as they escaped from and to various countries in the 1930’s and 40’s. The precarious quality of these pieces speaks to their sea voyages. Patched together from a variety of unseaworthy materials, these “boats” evoke the refugees’ desperation and determination to escape, their resourcefulness and resilience.

The current plight of refugees everywhere has been on my mind constantly and gives this work added resonance today.

At the same time, NIGHT BOATS alludes to other voyages through the darkness: the journey of the soul through the Underworld and the journeys we take when we close our eyes at night.

As such, my current work provides new habitations for my constant return to “her favorite theme – the impermanence of images, ideas, and forms of being.” (A. Georgievska-Shine).

MICHELINE KLAGSBRUN
1662 33rd Street NW
Washington DC, 20007
STUDIO PHONE 202.215.6915
EMAIL info@michelineklagsbrun.com

Board of Directors
The Phillips Collection, Board of Trustees
Vera List Center for Art and Politics, Advisory Council
Transformer, Board of Directors
Telluride Arts, Board of Directors

LINKS
Klagsbrun Studios
Georgetown Galleries
Studio Gallery
52 O St. STUDIOS
Adah Rose Gallery
Micheline Klagsbrun
William Ris Gallery
MiXX Atelier

BIOGRAPHY

Micheline Klagsbrun studied in Paris with Alfredo Echeverria and at the Corcoran with William Newman and Gene Davis. She has exhibited widely, and is in private collections nationally as well as in Europe and the Middle East. Solo and group exhibits in Washington D.C. include the Katzen Museum at American University, Arena Stage, gallery plan b, Studio Gallery, Exhibit9 Gallery, Goldman Gallery, the Embassies of Finland and Venezuela, Smith Center for the Healing Arts, Covington and Burling, Adah Rose Gallery, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art; elsewhere, Macy Gallery (New York City), William Ris Gallery (Cape May NJ), MiXX Projects and Gallery 81435 (Telluride CO), Aswan, Egypt and Delhi, India.

For many years she co-chaired the Forum for the Psychoanalytic Study of Film, edited the journal “Projections” and was a mentor at the Corcoran School of Art.

She is co-founder and President of CrossCurrents Foundation (founded in 2006) which as part of its mission sponsors art to promote social justice and to heighten public engagement with key social issues.

PUBLICATIONS

Green Art: Trees, Leaves, and Roots [Hardcover]
Ashley Rooney and Margery Goldberg, eds. Released February 28, 2014.

LOTUS/DRYOPE

The lotus, sacred in many cultures, was to the Ancient Greeks a transformed nymph, Lotis. The stories of Dryope and Lotis are intertwined, their beauties trapped together. Dryope, a lovely young mother, plucks a lotus, unaware that this blossom is a transformed nymph. The flower starts to drip blood, and Dryope suffers the fate of being turned into a tree.

This artistic collaboration offers a new translation of the story of Dryope and Lotus (Lotis) from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Abraham Frank’s poetry is interleaved on each page with images by Micheline Klagsbrun and followed by Klagsbrun’s Artists Notes on her experience of working with these stories, exploring their layers of meaning, and the inspiration of the collaborative process.

Full color throughout.
14 pp, 6" x 11.5", signed by the artist. $25.00
Available through www.studiogallerydc.com

RECENT ESSAYS

Rasmussen
You're a beautiful draftsperson. Your figures seem to move from one state to another. You are painting narrative subjects, but your intent is beyond the narrative. I love the idea of leaving the narrative to convey something outside the narrative - the instant of transformational..I guess the process of painting itself is a metaphor for transformation. That's what I like about your recent paintings, like “Medusa Incarnate”. It's as much about the materials as the form, it's all happening now, together, at once. Your work is transforming into something very exciting. (interview excerpt, Dec 2010).
Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator, American University Museum.

Micheline Klagsbrun and the Ovidian looking glass Copyright Aneta Georgievska-Shine 2009.
Georgievska-Shine is an independent scholar specializing in Northern Baroque and Renaissance art. In addition to her affiliation with University of Maryland as a part-time faculty member, she is a frequent guest lecturer for museums and art institutions including the Smithsonian, and has held several museum fellowships at prestigious institutions. Her publications include numerous articles in U.S. and international journals, essays in exhibition catalogs, as well as a book on Peter Paul Rubens.

Metabolizing the Metamorphoses of Ovid Copyright Micheline Klagsbrun 2009.
To be published in Amphora, the journal of the American Philological Association, Vol 8 (1). In this article I discuss how and why a visual artist turns to the 2,000-year old writings of a classical poet as a source of inspiration.