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17/6/2008

Karla Black

westlondonprojects, London

During an intense and concentrated process the Glasgow-based artist will be creating work in situ for westlondonprojects. Black’s interventions in the space will include one large and several smaller, multi-faceted hanging works. The smaller works, made of combinations of body moisturising cream and cling-film, petroleum jelly, paint and cellophane, while individual, will share the same, repeated title Forget About Faces. The larger work, made of polythene, chalk dust and thread, will be titled There Can Be No Arguments. She will also produce Punctuation is pretty popular: nobody wants to admit to much. "I am thinking about this work in terms of creating a space or a pause to conceal the more unattractive aspects of reality or of human character", the artist says about the large, pink chalk-dust floor sculpture.

"I am thinking that certain tropes of language, like punctuation, do the same job as attempts to cover up or prettify our physical selves. Both create a necessary distance from where we are unable to pick out that which is unpalatable. I do not see such screening as negative, but rather as a necessary and positive stance to avoid some unpleasant behaviours and events that can result from revealing too much or failing to establish boundaries."

Black has written extensively about the concepts behind her body of work. The following is an excerpt from a recent statement: "While there are ideas about psychological and emotional developmental processes held within the sculptures I make, the things themselves are actual physical explorations into thinking, feeling, communicating and relating. They are parts of an ongoing learning, or search for understanding, through a material experience that has been prioritised over language. The finished work has a looseness and messiness that is allowed to exist within an overall attempt at simplicity, purity, cleanness or smoothness. The sculptures are rooted in Psychoanalysis and Feminism; in theories about the violent and sexual underpinnings of both individual mental mess, as in neuroses and psychosis, and the formlessness of specific points in art history, i.e. German and Abstract Expressionism, Viennese Actionism, Land Art, Anti-form and Feminist Performance. They are caught between thoughtless gestures and seriously obsessive attempts at beauty.

Materials I have used include medicines for minor ailments, packaging, foodstuffs, household cleaners, toiletries and make-up. These domestic elements, formless even in their functions, are often used along with more traditional art-making materials like plaster, chalk, paper and paint, which have the capacity to be structural and are transformative in intention. Recently I have taken the formless materials through a process of tentative repression, and have been concentrating, through very specific colours and qualities of surface, on the level of attractiveness in the various sculptures made. There is often a physical struggle involved in arriving at the structure of a sculpture that then solidifies itself into an idea about, or an overall attitude towards problem-solving, in both its emotional and practical/technical guises. Known rules and techniques are intentionally not learned or adhered to. Instead, more haphazard, individual methods are found. This can be seen in the sculptures as evidence of touch or something close to performative gesture. The hope is that the work can elicit at least an impetus towards physical response.

Essentially, then, I make different configurations with or from mess or formless matter (that which is in a ‘pre-object’ type state), and from waste or used materials (that which is left ‘post- object’), as well as from straightforward art store supplies. None of the work is purely gestural, since there is always aesthetic intent, a support (some allusion to plinth/frame/stage/structure/edge), and evidence of a decision-making process; the finished things are almost objects, or only just objects. While nearly being performances, installations or paintings, the works actually retain a large amount of the autonomy of modernist sculpture. That which exists in between mediums does, nevertheless, excite me. This area of study feels like a place where negotiations can begin; somewhere that I can go to listen as well as speak. It is important, however, that what the work becomes in the end is “sculpture”. Sculpture as a category is its root, its limitations and its discipline. This is because sculpture is real. It is completely in the world, and therefore has the capacity at least to attempt to withhold the offer of travel elsewhere through an imaginary optical/ cerebral escape or engulfment. Sculpture inherently lends itself to forcing an initially physical/emotional acceptance, confrontation or engagement. Since it is actually here, perhaps it is here to help.

The work is, to a certain extent, site specific in that I respond, albeit obliquely, to a gallery space or at least think about where the objects will end up before and during making them. This thinking is not only in the spatial terms of the size and character of the room but also in terms of the conditions that will surround the work when in existence there. For example, is it an art fair or a commercial gallery or, differently in all kinds of ways, a project space or museum? The sculptures are never really finished until they are in place, and are often unavoidably destroyed, broken, or at least damaged, when an exhibition is over, then remade or re-installed with necessary differences elsewhere..." Karla Black 2008

Karla Black (* 1972 in Scotland) lives and works in Glasgow. She studied at Glasgow School of Art and, briefly, at Staedelschule in Frankfurt a.M. Her work has been presented in solo shows at both of her galleries, Mary Mary, Glasgow (2006) and Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2008), and at IBID Projects, London in 2007. In 2007 she was named winner of Best Artist at Zoo Art Fair. She took part in the group shows Poor Thing at the Kunsthalle Basel in 2007 and Strange Solution at Tate Britain in 2008. Future solo shows will be at Inverlieth House, Edinburgh in 2009 and at Milton Keynes Gallery in 2010.

westlondonprojects, an initiative by Maddalena and Paolo Kind, is curated by Christiane Schneider. The not-for-profit space aims to give emerging international artists a UK platform that is more intimate and experimental than a traditional public or commercial gallery. Exhibitions are open on fixed days and by appointment. Visitors are invited to attend one-off screenings, performances and viewings. Previous exhibitions have included Sue and Hayley Tompkins, Takehito Koganezawa, Yesim Akdeniz Graf and Markus Amm as well as the group show ‘Endless Summer’ by guest curator Gyonata Bonvicini. The 2006 programme included solo exhibitions by Robert Elfgen and Wade Guyton, a collaborative exhibition by Rosilene Luduvico and Takeshi Makishima, in 2007 by Simon Dybbroe Møller, Mauricio Guillén, Joan Jonas and Ján Mančuška. In 2008 Christian Frosi, Wolfgang Plöger and Jimmy Robert exhibited in the group exhibition ‘It Can Start Whenever You Want’.

Private View Wednesday 18 June 6.30-8.30

westlondonprojects
2 Shorrolds Road London
Gallery Open: Fridays and Saturdays 12-6pm, or Tuesday/Thursday by appointment
free admission

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