The plasticity of a surreal dream

Apr 8, 2018

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Karla Black
Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London, UK
17 November – 16 December 2017

We attended this exhibition in November last year and greatly enjoyed discovering Karla Black’s new body of work. With this presentation, she sought to emphasise the importance of mark-making in her practice, which—combined with colour and light—creates a clear connection between her sculptural approach and painting.

She also focused on one of the many sculptural problems that preoccupies her: how to preserve the precious, formal decisions she makes within the inherent fragility of the informal materials she favours. Many of the works in the exhibition were conceived and realised directly within the gallery space. As she has often stated, her sculpture is entirely non-representational.

“There is no image, no metaphor,” Karla Black remarked.

In the first room, there were free-standing sculptures made of Vaseline mixed with paint, sealed between glass screens. Across the whole exhibition we also encountered hanging sculptures made from the same materials, as well as clay, wool and spray paint. In the second room, floor-based works in a pink, fluffy material were displayed alongside slender sculptures composed of Johnson’s baby oil bottles, crystal glasses and wax.

Karla Black lives and works in Glasgow. Born in Alexandria, United Kingdom, in 1972, she completed an MA in Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art in 2004. In 2011, she represented Scotland at the 54th Venice Biennale and was nominated for the Turner Prize that same year. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions across the UK and internationally.

The works in this exhibition were fragile and evocative. The plasticity of the materials she employed, along with the pastel and shimmering colours that characterised many of the artworks, remain in my mind as elements of a surreal dream.