Klari Reis uses the tools and techniques of science in her creative process, constantly experimenting with new ways to apply materials and methods. She is driven by curiosity and her desire to explore and document the natural and unnatural with a sense of wonder and joy. The artist currently works in San Francisco, close to one of the largest concentrations of life science companies in the world. Klari takes advantage of this proximity to collaborate with local biomedical companies and thus receive inspiration from the cutting edge of biological techniques and discoveries; this context grounds her artwork and lets her authoritatively explore the increasingly fuzzy line between the technological and the natural.
The unifying theme of Klari’s art is her mastery of a new media plastic, epoxy polymer, and the fine control she brings to its reactions with a constantly-expanding variety of dyes and pigments. The UV-resistant plastic, similar to resin, supplies a common framework for the methods and language that she uses to explore and express interactions of material and color on a microscopic level. Compositions display brightly colored smears, bumps and blobs atop aluminum and wood panels. She pigments the plastic with powders, oils, acrylics and industrial dyes, built up through many layers of the ultra-glossy plastic. The shapes and colors bleed, blur, shift, and spread becoming remarkable through their eccentric detail. A skilled technician with a studio for a laboratory, Klari has turned these processes of her own invention into science in the service of her art.
Klari continues to develop her process and explore her unique synthesis of biology and creativity via her installation works, Hypochondria. The projects consist of hand painted petri dishes mounted on the wall at varying distances in groupings of 150, 60, or 30 pieces.
Klari Reis is represented by The Cynthia Corbett Gallery. Her work has been exhibited worldwide and public collections include Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK; Next World Capital’s offices in San Francisco, Paris, and Brussels; the MEG Centre in Oxford, UK; Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines; The Peninsula Shanghai Hotel; Theo Randall restaurant in London’s Intercontinental Hotel; Standard Life Investments in Bristol and London; Morley Fund Management, The Pullman Group, T.Rowe Price and Great Ormond Street Hospital (Morgan Stanley Clinical Building part of the Mittal Children’s Medical Centre) in London; the Stanford University Medical Center Hoover Pavilion in California; and Elan Pharmaceuticals, Genentech, Acetelion and Cytokinetics in South San Francisco.
Klari’s work has been featured in international publications such as The New York Times, GQ, Wired UK, Nature Chemical Biology, Elle Magazine, Time Out London, Artweek San Francisco, Art in America, Art Ltd. Magazine, Giornale Del Medico, Science Magazine, The Times, The New York Post, The Independent, Evening Standard Magazine, Frieze Magazine, The Financial Times, San Francisco Business Times, BBC1, CNN Business Report and CBS News Market Watch.