Paradise by Rafael Klein

About

‘The mind is it’s own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven’

John Milton, Paradise Lost

The work considers the ways in which we try to shape our environment to suit ourselves, creating invented landscapes which impact on our ability to perceive the reality of the natural world.

This artistic concern has been developed in a series of exhibitions incorporating sculpture, paintings, books and film. These take on the quality of a narrative journey through an altered reality.

Klein grew up in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York. As a child he was fascinated by the world of imagination to be found in the famous amusement park. ‘Tin Temples’, his first large solo exhibition at 112 Greene Street in New York, was an installation of huge relief works exploring different aspects of American mythology. The Car, Hollywood, and Florida are all myths creating their own ‘invented world’. They all came together in an immersive environment, seductively reproducing these icons while hinting at the darkness lurking just behind the stage set.

Klein’s public sculptures are also transformative environmental interventions. These explore the nature of public space. They incorporate community collaboration in creating permanent sculptures which both crystallise and expand the space’s uses and identity.

Paradise is a continuation of this artistic concern, as it explores our experience of the beauty and fragility of the natural world in the 21st century.