Jade Klara

Jade Klara uses a wide range of materials to give form to her limitless imagination. All her works revolve around the narrative potential of the image. She works with picture and text in paint, neon, print or digital painting to articulate soft focus worlds of strange magic and beauty. Her work has been described as whimsical, graphic, slick and dark, centered around the transformative potential of the concept of magic to change or rearticulate the everyday. It is the polarising potential of a narrative that she strives to find, so you are always likely to see a bit of melancholy amidst the beauty or satire in the commonplace. A sense of childhood and transience, love and loss is central to her work with deep companionship between her characters a pervading theme. Overall she routes for the aesthetic underdog to flavour her beauty out of potential boredom. Klara works from her studio in Woodstock. She graduated with a B.A from UCT (2003) and a B.A from Vega (2007). She has exhibited in galleries in London, Los Angeles, Portland and Cape Town. She also does work for various commercial clients.

SELECTED PROJECTS & EXHIBITIONS

2017 – AO group show, Salon91, Oracle group show, Salon 91. 2016 – Cape Town Art Fair with Salon91; Stellar Group show, Salon 91. 2015 – This is The Place, collaborative group exhibition at Salon91; Golden Haze, Salon91. 2014 – Those Who Wander, Salon91; Home is Wherever I’m with you, Salon91; 2013 – The Witching Hour, Salon91; I’d Rather be Swimming, Salon91. 2011 – If You Let Yourself Love a Wild Thing, Salon91; Guten Tag, A Word of Art Gallery, Cape Town. 2010 – WTF is Low brow, London Miles Gallery, London; Salon Summer Show, Salon91; Illustrious, Compound Gallery, Portland OR; Spookasem, Salon91. 2009 – Way of Flow, C.A.V.E Gallery, Los Angeles; Candy coated canvas, London Miles Gallery, London.