- Top of the Pops
- Ein Haufen Zeit
- Complementary Targets
- Grüsse von dort
- Painting Landscapes
- Painting Landscapes with a Past
- On Speed
- Postcards (collages)
- Map of Paradise

Top of the Pops is an ongoing series mixing art history and pop culture. In the center of each collage is a portrait of some of the most popular art postcards, that enfolds it own world made from fragments of other art postcards. The size is exactly that of an LP and is a reminiscence of the time when colour vinyl records became fashionable
Top of the Pops, 2010/2011, collages from art postcards
Diametre:  30 cm

The title of the sculpture Ein Haufen Zeit plays on the use of the word ‹heap›. The term ‹heap› defines both an indeterminate quantity and a specific material shape that is governed by gravity. Where matter passively succumbs to the forces of gravity horizontally as it expands towards its base, it overcomes these forces along its vertical axis, tapering into the culminating point of the characteristic cone. We use slotted cards to form a regular conical mound. Each card has a reflective foil covering one side and an advertisement cut from a television magazine on the other. we organise the cards with the reflecting side predominantly facing in one direction and the television adverts in the other and thereby giving the conical sculpture an inherent orientation in space and structuring the viewing experience.

2009, pictures from TV magazines and reflective foil, 90 x 83 cm

Hendrikje Kühne/Beat Klein im Kunstmusuem Olten 2009 Annelise Zwez in Kunstbulletin Nr. 11/2009

Inspired by Jasper Jones’ Targets we organised cut out representations of consumer goods according to colour to form three Complementary Targets. When ‹aiming› one’s gaze at the Targets the complementary colours confuse the eye and the images start to flicker, quite in contradiction to the ordinary understanding of targets in general.

Complementary Targets, 2009, advertisment pictures on board
diametre: black and white 87 cm
green and red 75 cm
yellow and violet 59 cm

For this series of collages we used fragmented picture postcards. Picture postcards are used to send greetings from one person to another. At the same time they are the photographic evidence of the senders temporary whereabouts, often with a little triumph.

We rearranged these fragments in a seemingly haphazard way, yet the alignment of the horizons indicates a clear intention to create the impression of landscape. Landscape however from a time and place, that don’t exist and where no one could possibly ever have been. Let alone take pictures from there.

2009, collages from postcards, 37 x 46 cm each

Shown in the exhibition Fragmente von Sehnsucht at GIST Gallery Amsterdam

For these works postcards of landscape paintings from museumshops were used. They were disected and reassembled to create a number of landscape ‹paintings›.

Painting a Plain, 2009, collages from art postcards, 50 x 70 cm
Painting with Strange Plants, 2009, collages from art postcards, 50 x 70cm

By cutting postcards of landscape pictures into pieces, Kuehne/Klein fabricate their own pallete, using the individual elements as paint. Merging styles and centuries, individual strokes and fashion, they cross the border of the media to create a new variety of painting as such.

2006/7, collages from art postcards, 70 x 100 cm each

In a certain state of mind (intoxicated with speed, extasy, overfatigue, i.e. when the perception is overloaded) the human brain has a tendency to make extraordinary connections from divorced fragments of perception.

For this commission we glued together streches of roads cut out from maps representing our travels of the past year to form a spider web structure. We filled the spaces between these roads with fragments of magazine pictures.

On Speed, 2006, collage, 100 x 130 cm

At a closer look at the big landscape picture countless landscape elements from disected postcards become decernible. These elements like skies, mountains, meadows and trees were reassembled according to motifs and shades of colour. Together they form a changing view which can never be fully focussed. The second part of the work is made of the backs of postcards, showing the reverse. A composed collage of texts that defies decoding, since the texts are either fragmented or illegible, forming in their individuality a counter-part to the world of mass-produced images of the first.

Grüezi Schweiz, 2004, collage, 100 x 150 cm
Herzliche Wintergrüsse! 2005, collage, 70 x 100 cm

For Map of Paradise we used the the little orientation maps that can be found in holiday brochures. They were glued together, according to colour and shape, to form one big map the size of a map that used to hang in class rooms. As most of the advertised locations have a beach, there are many islands. Many of the locations appear several times according to their popularity. This map therefore is a reflection of wishes and ideals rather than reality.

see also: Mapping Paradise by Dr. Alessandro Scafi, London/Rome

2002, collage, the gallery, Guernsey, 200 x 360 cm