Richard Klein is a Connecticut-based artist, curator and writer. As an artist, he has exhibited widely, including the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase; Caren Golden Fine Art, New York; the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Hales Gallery, London; Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, FL; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA, Artspace, New Haven, CT, The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), Portland, OR; Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA, Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, NY; Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, VT; Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Exhibit by Alberson Tulsa, OK; and Incident Report/Flow Chart Foundation, Hudson, NY. In 2021 he mounted two solo exhibitions: The Understory at ICEHOUSE Project Space in Sharon, CT, and Richard Klein - New Works at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, CT. Reviews of his work have appeared in Two Coats of Paint, Whitehot Magazine, The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Art in America, and The New Yorker. From 1999 to 2022 he was Exhibitions Director of Exhibitions Director of The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. In his two-decade long career as a curator of contemporary art he has organized over 80 exhibitions, including solo shows of the work of Janine Antoni, Sol LeWitt, Mark Dion, Roy Lichtenstein, Hank Willis Thomas, Brad Kahlhamer, Kim Jones, Jack Whitten, Jessica Stockholder, Tom Sachs, and Elana Herzog. Major curatorial projects at The Aldrich have included Fred Wilson: Black Like Me (2006), No Reservations: Native American History and Culture in Contemporary Art (2006), Elizabeth Peyton: Portrait of an Artist (2008), Shimon Attie: MetroPAL.IS. (2011), Michael Joo: Drift (2014), Kay Rosen: H Is for House (2017), Weather Report (2019), Hugo McCloud: from where I stand (2021), and Duane Slick: The Coyote Makes the Sunset Better (2022). His essays on art and culture have appeared in Cabinet Magazine and have been included in books published by Gregory R. Miller & Co., Damiani, Picturebox, Ridinghouse, Hatje Cantz, and the University of Chicago Press, among others. Richard Klein: Two if by Sea Beginning in early 2020 with the start of the pandemic, Richard Klein began a series of works that used the traditional brass lantern as a central motif. Two if by Sea is the first exhibition of this series, which includes both sculpture and hand-worked prints. Klein had previously used the lantern form in his sculpture, but in this series of works the lantern is clearly offered as a symbol of both warning and hope. The title of the exhibition is taken from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem Paul Revere’s Ride, published in 1861, that describes the way lanterns lit in the steeple of Boston’s Old North Church alerted Revere to the route the British were taking in their offensive. Written and published at the start of the Civil War, Longfellow’s poem was seen as a call to action in preserving the Union. Klein’s lanterns are presented emerging from darkness, but not yet illuminated, speaking of a moment filled with possibilities. Made of vintage discarded lanterns, eyeglasses and sunglasses, the sculptures are blackened with flashes of spectral blue on their surfaces. The prints are based on photographs the artist took at the source of the lanterns, a scrap metal yard in Stamford, Connecticut.