FLUME by Ian Kline
2021
Archival pigment print
24 × 30 in
Edition of 2, with 1 artist proof
Framed
“Any commercial or paid photoshoot I’ve been on recently has made me depressed about photography and how people think about it and the pathetic vapidness of the capitalist hellscape and confused what the fuck a creative is and why they get paid so much money to say the word ‘vibes.’ But I do keep remembering a time in Butte, Montana last September [shooting photos of locals]. It was one of the few moments recently that reminded me that people can be genuinely generous and care about photography, even if they aren’t inside our small photo world bubble. It re-instilled the importance of going out into the world to make images, breaking out of our bubbles, embracing chance, and the value in being surprised. The world is always more interesting than your ideas.”
—Ian Kline, from his statement on Cultured Mag
Ian Kline was born in 1994 in York, Pennsylvania, under the shadow of a twelve foot tall man lifting a barbell spinning in circles above the Veterans of Foreign Wars Memorial Highway. Casting strangers, family, holograms, memories, lovers, and the anxious internal imagination, Kline is writing a paranoid American biography. Working with the world, Ian reflects against the spontaneous to reveal alien textures surrounding the pedestrian inside of a larger historical drama. Through his belief in Absurdist philosophy, he is interested in his relationship to the pulsating landscape, influencing the dreams, nightmares, and hallucinations of the United States and himself—a macro and micro rhythmic scale to sing to a frequency that can be hopeful even in the depths of night.
At the time of Lucid Pleasure's release, Ian Kline lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design from 2013–2015, received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2017, and attained an MFA in Photography at Yale School of Art in 2022. Kline has had solo exhibitions at the Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2019), Space Place in Nizhniy Tagil, Russia (2018), and Skylab Gallery in Columbus, Ohio. He has been exhibited in group shows at the CMCA (2025), Berlin Art Institute (2024), UTA Artist Space (2022), and David Zwirner (2022), to name a few.
He has been recognized in Cultured’s Young Photographers List, SIPF Photobook Award Shortlist, and the Lucie Foundation Photobook Prize Shortlist, to name a few. In 2023, Kline was a resident at the Brooklyn Darkroom. His work has been featured in various publications including Vanity Fair, The Washington Post Book Review, C-41 Magazine, Photo-Eye, Collector Daily, Office Magazine, Booooooom, and Fotoroom.
Kline’s publications include but are not limited to: I’m Getting Tired of Us (Orphan Editions, 2024), Two Fifty Five Zero Zero (Orphan Editions, 2023), Hot Rocks Dead Grass (Orphan Editions, 2022), Rabbit/Hare (Deadbeat Club, 2020), and Echo Dad’s Basement (Quiet Pages, 2019).
Archival pigment prints use refined pigment particles to create exquisite, high-resolution artwork. This printing method creates museum-quality artwork designed to last; ink and paper are critical elements in an archival pigment print’s life span.