Lee Klein

Lee Klein (born November 30, 1965) is a poet, curator, essayist, and writer on the arts. He is the author of the "World's Biggest Shopping Mall Poem" about the taking over of reality by consumer culture. His poem of the aforementioned name was published by Linear arts in 1997 (ISBN# 1-891219-0-6) in a limited edition followed by "Financial Surrealists Take the Train" (ISBN#1-891219-52-9) in 1999. Columbia poetry Professor Bob Holman said of his work " I don't know if your work is an aesthetic or a mental condition". In 1996 he read at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the reading series accompanying "The Beat Generation and American Culture" exhibition.

As a producer Lee Klein conceived of the downtown meets uptown reading series "The Literary Life" at the now defunct nightclub "Life' in the former space of Art D'Lugoff's Village Gate. Readers in this trailblazing program included George Plimpton, Larry Rivers, Candace Bushnell, George Dawes Green, Vernon Reid (of the band Living Color), Michael Gross,Carter Ratcliff, Bill Beckley, Willoughby Sharp, Hal Sirowitz, Emily XYZ, Max Blagg, Glenn O'Brien, Anthony Haden-Guest, Zoe Anglessy, Michael Carter, Arnold Weinstein, Victor Bockris, Taylor Mead, Edwin Torres, Robert c. Morgan, and David Henderson. In 1999 this series also included one of the first events in Harper's Magazine 150th-anniversary celebration. The series was recreated for one night at the National Arts Club in the Samuel J. Tilden mansion on Gramercy Park in November 2001.

As an essayist he has written for PAJ (Performing Arts Journal formerly Johns Hopkins now MIT Press) including a featured piece on art after nine-eleven “Art on the Eve of destruction” which arose from his notes for a lecture he gave at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania in 2002. Other articles he penned for this journal include "Dennis Oppenheim: The Artist as Toymaker and the Viscious Amusement Park of the pre-millennial baroque" ; "The Poetics of Removable Presence in the Work of Damian Loeb", and "Bonfires of the Urbanities: The Public art of Barnaby Evans". He has written catalogues or catalogue entries for artists including Roberto Azank, Brian Gormley, Peter Bradley, Tyrome Tripoli,Salma Arastu and Heidemarie Kull.

As curator and essayist he combined the two roles to animate the concept of "Hypertexture"- as it applies to plastic arts and curated two exhibitions therein ("Hypertexture" in July 2003 and "Hypertexturalities" from September 8 - October 7, 2006). These exhibitions included the work of leading artists David Reed, Fabian Marcaccio, Pia Fries, Jamie Daglish, Ed Kerns & Elizabeth Chapman, Rick Hildebrandt, Stephen Wilkes, Mark Milloff, Will Pappenheimer, Ron Janowich & Merijn Van Der Heidjin at the Florence Lynch Gallery in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

He was the Olympic correspondent for The "Forward" newspaper in Sydney at the summer games of 2000 and is a contributing editor to "A Gathering of the Tribes" literary journal (for whom he interviewed art critc Dave Hickey as well as artists David Medalla and Mahi Binebine) and "Night" Magazine.

In 2006 Artforum magazine wrote of his interaction with artnet editor Walter Robinson at a party for "BOMB" magazine. Also in 2006 he emerged victorious on "The Artful Dodger" episode of The Peoples Court with Judge Marily Millian.

As an actor he has appeared as art critic Clement Greenberg in Bill Rabinovitch's spoof "Pollock Squared". As a panelist he appeared on theMark Kostabi NYC cable public access art critic game show "Name that Painting" alongside scribes Adrian Dannatt and Joe Fyfe on channel 36. He continues to contribute to "NYArts" magazine and "M the New York Artworld.

Lee Klein, the subject of this article, is often confused with Lee Klein, the fiction writer and essayist, who lives in Philadelphia, edits a literary website called Eyeshot.net, and graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2006. In a twist of fate scripted for the cyber age, the two also share the same middle name, height, and shoe size.

Lee Klein is now a tour guide for the double-decker bus company in New York City: Grey Line. He is known for his very informed tours of NYC delivered with his manic personality. He is often seen on these tours pointing out many esoteric sites around the city with his trade-mark "mad-scientist" laugh.

External links

* Paj Essays
* http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/paj/v023/23.2klein_l.html
* http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/performing_arts_journal/v024/24.3klein01.html
* http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/152028103322491656?journalCode=pajj
* http://www.damianloeb.com/history/paj92002.html

*Hypertexturalities Exhibition
* http://chelseaartgalleries.com/Florence+Lynch+Gallery/Hypertexturalities+_28Architectures+and+Morphologies_29.html
* Artforum Social Diary Mention
* http://artforum.com/diary/id=10774

*In Nyartsmgazine
* http://nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=772&Itemid=224

*Lafayette College Lecture
* http://www.lafayette.edu/news.php/view/2320/

* 2008 Biennale D'arte Venezia Review
*http://www.tribes.org/web/2008/01/30/la-biennale-di-venezia/