Karla Black’s work has
a tendency to make one feel like they’ve entered another world. The sculptor
represented Scotland in the 2011 Venice Biennale and her multi-room installation
in an old palazzo was a dreamy pastel vision, the wafting clouds of cellophane
and powder offset by neatly raked dirt floors and peeling paint of the
building.
Mouthwatering shades
of apricot and pistachio were mirrored in the faded wallpaper of the Palazzo
Pisani and towered in pigmented mountains over visitors’ heads.
By virtue of their
formlessness, Karla Black’s sculptures seem both minimal and excessive,
rigourous and fragile, evoking ideals and concepts surrounding women and their
roles.
Her sculptures and
installations, made up of everyday domestic and cosmetic materials such as
Vaseline, powder, fake tan and shampoo, are transformed into monumental piles
and scattered across the floor, allowing the viewer to ponder their own
interpretation of the works.
Black’s work never
fails to exude a sense of playful femininity, and are as much about the
durational progress of assembly as they are the final work. Her practice plays
on ideas about rituals and process, and the sculptures are compelling in their
dichotomy between attraction and repulsion – each work being so tactile, yet so
obviously breakable.
A tension also exists
between the pale, translucent materials she uses and their application on a
grand scale, often dwarfing the rooms the are displayed in.
Whether it’s a
physical reaction or a psychological questioning that occurs for the viewer
standing in front of Karla Black’s work, the effect they provoke is difficult
to describe in words.