Modern Art is pleased to present Karla Black’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery and first at Modern Art Paris.
Black has exhibited internationally for over twenty years, developing a unique visual language that explores an expanded definition of sculpture. For this presentation, Black has produced a new series of sculptures and paintings made in the space, responding to the galleries’ architecture, in particular its past as a residential apartment.
In a new series of paintings on mirrors, Black applies oil paint on reflective mirrors of various shapes and sizes to create a suite of expressionist compositions; the painted marks negate their reflective function, and disrupt what Black observes as our need for constant self examination. Writer Mercier visited The Royal Glass and Mirror Company in Paris, just prior to the start of the French Revolution, and was indignant at employees "subjected to work to which a tyrant wouldn't have dared condemn." Simultaneously, Mercier observed that the privileged youth of the time would glance "in four mirrors at once to see if their breeches are tight against their skin" and who were unaware of the cost in blood, sweat and tears of the pleasure of admiring oneself in a looking glass." Black’s uses mirrors as portals to examine their own history, asking us to consider the physical labour and toil that brought about the Parisian 18th century casting method, one easily taken for granted today.
The final forms of her sculptures, like a mirror, belie the labour that produced them, her artistic labour here is not seen. Black’s sculptures evoke a constant sense of spontaneity and experimentation, taking on the appearance of natural formations that just appeared. The work’s morphic bodily impressions evokes the physicality of its making, yet stand frozen, poised in place.
The sculptures and the paintings combine to create an environment of ornamentation, one that plays on the legacy of the rococo style. Black is keen to simultaneously explore aesthetic flourishes as well as physical exertion, and the granular quality of matter that connects us to the material world of making, considered in this way, Black unpacks new possibilities for an experience of materiality and the senses. With a vivid colour palette across mediums and materials, Black indulges a desire for aesthetics and harmony, while considering the grounding qualities of labour and matter.
The Mirror: A History by Sabine Melchior-Bonnet
Karla Black was born in 1972 in Alexandria, Scotland, and lives and works in Glasgow. She has mounted recent solo exhibitions at Bechtler Stiftung (2024); New Art Gallery, Walsall (2023); Des Moines Art Center (2020); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2019); The Power Plant, Toronto (2018); Museum Dhondt Dhaenens, Deurle (2017); and Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (2016). In 2011, she was nominated for the Turner Prize. The same year, she represented Scotland at the 54th Venice Biennale. In 2021, Black inaugurated Edinburgh’s renovated Fruitmarket Gallery with the survey exhibition ‘sculptures (2001 – 2021): details for a retrospective’. Her works are held in collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dallas Museum of Art; Des Moines Art Center; Kunstmuseum Den Haag; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; and Tate, London. In June 2025, the artist will present a solo exhibition at Kunstraum Dornbirn, Austria.