Karla Black at Modern Art Oxford on artrepublic.com
Exhibition running from Sep 30 2009
until Nov 29 2009
This autumn Modern Art Oxford presents the most comprehensive UK exhibition to date of work by Glasgow-based artist Karla Black. Black has attracted attention over recent years for her expansive floor works and remarkable hanging sculptures, created from materials that suggest both a sensory recollection of childhood: powder-paint, crushed chalk and sugar paper; and a distinct feminine association: lipstick, nail varnish and body cream. The exhibition at Modern Art Oxford comprises an ambitious series of sculptures made specifically for the upper galleries. Karla Black said, “The large galleries at Modern Art Oxford will allow me to push the work into the full museum scale that it has been edging towards for the last few years. It can finally become what it really is.” The artist’s use of cosmetic products and other loose materials, and the processes of her art-making viscerally evoke both the body and the natural world. Many of her works literally ‘wear’ make-up, and the interplay between the cosmetic and surface, form and formlessness, is ever-present. Black’s sculptures appear to be as much a reference to Minimal and performative practices of the late 1960s, and the anti-form works of Eva Hesse and Robert Smithson, as they are to a historical sculptural tradition that resonates as far back as Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa for instance. ARTIST BIOGRAPHY - Karla Black was born in Alexandria, Scotland in 1972 and now lives and works in Glasgow. She completed a Masters Degree in Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art, 2002-2004, a Master of Philosophy at Glasgow School of Art, 1999-2000 and a BA (Hons) Fine Art, Sculpture at Glasgow School of Art 1995-1999.She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Der Kunstverein Hamburg and migros museum, Zürich in 2009, with a forthcoming exhibition at Inverleith House. Group exhibitions have included Strange Solution, Art Now, Tate Britain, London, 2008, Poor Thing, Kunsthalle Basel, 2007 and Like It Matters, CCA, Glasgow, 2005. OPENING HOURS: Tue –Sat, 10.00 – 17.00 Sun, 12.00 – 17.00 Image Credits: Karla Black, There Can Be No Arguments 2008, Polythene, chalk dust, thread, Dimensions Variable, Image courtesy The Artist; Mary Mary, Glasgow Karla Black, Installation view Kunstverein, Courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne; Mary Mary Gallery, Glasgow, Photo: Fred Dott Principles of Admitting 2009, 2 parts, Plaster powder, powder paint, sugar paper, spray tan, chalk, concealer stick, Courtesy of the artist, Mary Mary, Glasgow and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Photographer: A. Burger, Zürich  |
