Tania Franco Klein, Car, Window (Self-portrait), from Proceed To The Route, 2018. Archival pigment print, 28 x 41 inches.
Tania Franco Klein, Contained (Self-portrait), from Positive Disintegration, 2016. Archival pigment print, 42 x 63 inches.
Tania Franco Klein, Dear Stranger (Self-portrait), from Proceed To The Route, 2020. Archival pigment print, 39 x 31 inches.
Tania Franco Klein, Rounded Mirror, Window (Self-portrait), from Break In Case of Emergency, 2022. Archival pigment print, 29 1/2 x 39 3/8 inches.
Tania Franco Klein, Toaster (Self-portrait), from Positive Disintegration, 2016. Archival pigment print, 28 x 41 inches.
Tania Franco Klein, Valley (Self-portrait), from Proceed To The Route, 2019. Archival pigment print, 49 x 39 inches.
Tania Franco Klein, Yellow Tiles (Self-portrait), from Positive Disintegration, 2017. Archival pigment print, 20 x 30 inches.
Yancey Richardson is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition for Mexico City native Tania Franco Klein. Long Story Short will be on view in the project gallery from October 24 through December 21, with an opening reception on Thursday, October 24 from 6 – 8pm.
Franco Klein’s debut exhibition will present a selection of works from her seminal series Break In Case Of Emergency, Proceed To The Route, and Positive Disintegration. These series evolve with no definitive beginning or ending, taking shape through continuous emotional exercises and explorations of social behavior and states of solitude within ambiguous spaces and time.
Franco Klein’s practice centers around the examination of modern anxieties and the performative stresses that come from living life online: a constant fixation on self-improvement and productivity, an endurance of media overstimulation, and a propensity to profile ourselves, and others, to fit into today's eclectic and fragmented realities.
Often using herself as the subject, Franco Klein creates vivid, cinematic photographs. In her work, female characters inhabit a visually rich world, recalling the psychological film noir dramas of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. Franco Klein juxtaposes a nostalgic affection for and disillusionment with the narrative of a woman trapped in the loneliness of domestic settings, as seen in Toaster (Self-portrait), 2016 or within the dystopian western landscape of Car, Window (Self-portrait), 2018 and Valley, (Self-portrait), 2019. Her figures cannot escape the tension of their environment, or the stress of how they are seen by others. As the artist explains, “We are always trying to create identities with social media to express the good part of ourselves, as if there is some kind of shame in knowing what we are on the other side... because we feel that we have failed in what we are supposed to be.”
Tania Franco Klein, born 1990 in Mexico, received her BA in Architecture from Centro Diseño, Cine y Televisión in Mexico City, and her MA in Photography from the University of Arts London. Franco Klein will be featured in New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging, the 40th anniversary edition of MoMA’s celebrated New Photography series. She was the recipient of Artproof Schliemann Award supporting Artist Residencies in Arles, France, and her work is in the prestigious collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and The Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA.
