Karla Black
12 Jan - 23 Feb 2013
KARLA BLACK
12 January - 23 February 2013
In her second exhibition at Galerie Gisela Capitain, Karla Black shows 16 sculptures that visualise all shades of pink. The show is about 'decision making' within colour. To visualise the possibilities of artistic choice as clearly as possible the artist decided to use only one colour to illustrate the shift between nothing and something.
When entering the gallery the visitors are immediately confronted with this 'decision making' as they have to walk through a corridor of nine small hanging paper works. These sculptures are like three dimensional colour sketches installed 20 cm in front of the walls. They fan out in all shades of pink like a colour palette. Visitors are forced to walk past them as the right hand entrance to the main gallery space is barred with a long hanging paper sculpture which can be seen partially only from the back. After being guided through the corridor of small hanging sculptures to the main room the visitor can see the front of that long hanging paper sculpture. The windows are covered by a transparent cellophane skrim, made out of circles, which interacts with the architecture of the gallery space. Small pink vaseline dots form a visual chain within the cellophane. Parallel to the skrim four standing sculptures are presented on the floor. Three are made out of paper and one out of a very thin metal - a material which the artist uses for the first time. They are all installed in a line again like a colour strip of different shades of pink.
In the third room of the gallery, a large cellophane standing sculpture covered with pink powder sits on the floor like a flower.
It is important to Karla Black that visitors experience the work by moving around it. For her, sculptures are "actual physical explorations into thinking, feeling, communication and relating; parts of an ongoing search for understanding (of the world) through a material experience that has been prioritised over language". (KB)
The current exhibition at Galerie Gisela Capitain proves the artist's unique use of material. Besides traditional artistic materials such as plaster powder and paper, Karla Black works with products from ordinary life, for example cosmetics, soaps, cellophane and polythene. The lightness of the material often forms a strong opposite to the monumentality that emanates from her work.
The show brings up many main ideas in Karla Black's work which is inspired by Land Art and Minimialism as well as Abstract Expressionism and feministic performance. It demonstrates her complex understanding of sculpture which is borne out by her skirting close to other mediums proved by choosing the typical painting subject 'colour'.
Karla Black says: "My works are often almost paintings, almost installations, almost performance art but, in the end, they are always and definitely sculptures because they are autonomous physicalities with edges that separate them from each other."
12 January - 23 February 2013
In her second exhibition at Galerie Gisela Capitain, Karla Black shows 16 sculptures that visualise all shades of pink. The show is about 'decision making' within colour. To visualise the possibilities of artistic choice as clearly as possible the artist decided to use only one colour to illustrate the shift between nothing and something.
When entering the gallery the visitors are immediately confronted with this 'decision making' as they have to walk through a corridor of nine small hanging paper works. These sculptures are like three dimensional colour sketches installed 20 cm in front of the walls. They fan out in all shades of pink like a colour palette. Visitors are forced to walk past them as the right hand entrance to the main gallery space is barred with a long hanging paper sculpture which can be seen partially only from the back. After being guided through the corridor of small hanging sculptures to the main room the visitor can see the front of that long hanging paper sculpture. The windows are covered by a transparent cellophane skrim, made out of circles, which interacts with the architecture of the gallery space. Small pink vaseline dots form a visual chain within the cellophane. Parallel to the skrim four standing sculptures are presented on the floor. Three are made out of paper and one out of a very thin metal - a material which the artist uses for the first time. They are all installed in a line again like a colour strip of different shades of pink.
In the third room of the gallery, a large cellophane standing sculpture covered with pink powder sits on the floor like a flower.
It is important to Karla Black that visitors experience the work by moving around it. For her, sculptures are "actual physical explorations into thinking, feeling, communication and relating; parts of an ongoing search for understanding (of the world) through a material experience that has been prioritised over language". (KB)
The current exhibition at Galerie Gisela Capitain proves the artist's unique use of material. Besides traditional artistic materials such as plaster powder and paper, Karla Black works with products from ordinary life, for example cosmetics, soaps, cellophane and polythene. The lightness of the material often forms a strong opposite to the monumentality that emanates from her work.
The show brings up many main ideas in Karla Black's work which is inspired by Land Art and Minimialism as well as Abstract Expressionism and feministic performance. It demonstrates her complex understanding of sculpture which is borne out by her skirting close to other mediums proved by choosing the typical painting subject 'colour'.
Karla Black says: "My works are often almost paintings, almost installations, almost performance art but, in the end, they are always and definitely sculptures because they are autonomous physicalities with edges that separate them from each other."