Karla Black

Modern Art is pleased to present Karla Black's fifth solo exhibition with the gallery and her first at our Paris location. 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 one example of Black's spatial exploration, oil paint is applied on reflective mirrors of various shapes and sizes to create a suite of expressionist compositions; the painted marks trouble their reflective function and disrupt what Black observes as our need for constant self-examination. The French 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 uses mirrors as portals through which to examine this history, asking the viewer 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. Here, her artistic labour is not seen. Black's sculptures evoke a constant sense of spontaneity and experimentation, taking on the appearance of naturally occurring formations. The work's morphic bodily impressions evokes the physicality of its making, yet stand frozen, poised in place. In conversation with the space, the works 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 the physical exertion of making, and the granular quality of matter that connects us to the material world. Working in a vivid colour palette across media, Black indulges a desire for aesthetics and harmony, while considering the grounding qualities of labour and materiality.