Darin Klein - Bio / CV

Darin Klein : Bio

My introduction to curating came fast and furious in the fall off 1996 when I co-founded scene/escena in the Mission District of San Francisco. Built literally from the ground up, scene/escena was a totally D.I.Y. venue for emerging bay area visual and performance artists. In its first year, the gallery was host to 17 exhibitions featuring over 70 artists and performers and had garnered the San Francisco Bay Guardian Reader's Poll award for Best Friday Night Art Events.

During this period I fostered relationships with many fledgling artists who would go on to exhibit work at established galleries and museums including SF MOMA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, The Armand Hammer Museum and Roberts & Tilton in Los Angeles, and The Drawing Center and The Whitney in New York.

In 1997 I took the position of curator and events coordinator at San Francisco's SPACE, a cross-disciplinary environment for artists working in any medium. There, I implemented the salon-style gallery Ground Level, working to promote underexposed artists in a casual, nurturing atmosphere and co-organizing successful events to raise much-needed funds for Visual Aid, a non-profit organization benefiting artists living with HIV and AIDS.

My involvement in independent media and San Francisco's underground literary community developed as I published and distributed numerous solo and collaborative artists' books, chapbooks and 'zines - publishing projects that can be described as exhibitions in print, a cost-efficient and immediate alternative to actual gallery space. This led to my involvement in 1999 with Blue Books, the small press bookshop at The New College. There, I curated a series of socio-politically inspired exhibitions featuring visual art, spoken word and self-made book arts. My primary objective in undertaking these projects was to bring together artists, writers and those concerned with the growth and exposure of independent media. During this period I was also fortunate to spend time in Mexico City as an artist in residence at la Panaderia.

In 2000 I moved to Los Angeles, and I have continued to curate exhibitions, seeking out and utilizing both galleries and non-traditional spaces for projects that evolve from my extensive networking and professional relationships with emerging and established artists, my constant research into individual artists' practices, and my curiosity about developing narratives in the current art historical dialogue. Most recently, my focus has been trained on film, video and performance art, culminating in my involvement as guest curator at New Langton Arts in San Francisco, prog:ME Digital Media Festival in Rio de Janeiro, and The Hammer Museum and Silverlake Film Festival Shorts in Los Angeles. From 2001 to 2007 I curated the small press section at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, resulting in a selection of 'zines, mini comics, chapbooks and artists' books unprecedented in Los Angeles. In 2007 I took the position of Programs Coordinator at the Hammer Museum.

Throughout the past decade, I have participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions, and continue to show my own work in galleries and museums internationally as well as produce and distribute independent publications on a regular basis.