Karla Black

During an intense and concentrated eight day process the Glasgow-based artist Karla Black has created three sculptures in situ for westlondonprojects – Forget About Faces, There Can Be No Arguments and Punctuation is pretty popular: nobody wants to admit to much.

The specific, yet disparate, one-off thought processes embodied in the separate works come out of a general and continuous experimentation.

While there are ideas about psychological and emotional developmental processes held within the sculptures, the things themselves are actual physical explorations into thinking, feeling, communicating and relating. They are parts of an ongoing learning, or search for understanding, through a material experience that has been prioritised over language.

Generally, the sculptures are rooted in Kleinian Psychoanalysis and Feminism; in theories about the violent and sexual underpinnings of both individual mental mess, as in neuroses and psychosis, and the formlessness of specific points in art history, i.e. German and Abstract Expressionism, Viennese Actionism, Land Art, Anti-form and Feminist Performance.

Materials that are formless even in their functions, like medicines for minor ailments, household cleaners, toiletries and make-up are used along with plaster, chalk, paper and paint, which have the capacity to be structural and are transformative in intention.

Essentially, these configurations are made from mess or formless matter (that which is in a ‘pre-object’ type state), and from waste or used materials (that which is left ‘post-object’), as well as from straightforward art store supplies. None of the work is purely gestural, since there is obvious aesthetic intent. The finished things are almost objects, or only just objects. While nearly being performances, installations or paintings, the works actually retain a large amount of the autonomy of modernist sculpture. This is because sculpture is real. It is completely in the world, and therefore has the capacity at least to attempt to withhold the offer of travel elsewhere through an imaginary optical/cerebral escape. Since it is actually here, perhaps it is here to help.

Part of the disparate thinking within this exhibition is that happiness is to be had from an immersion in the physical world, from moments of fascination or absorbtion, when self-consciousness is lost and we be and do purely for the sake of it rather than imagining what we might look like to others. Another thought is that there are certain truths at the base of relationships between people, however deep down, that are undisputed. Everything else is just surface. All of the separate works here are caught between thoughtless gestures and seriously obsessive attempts at beauty. Editing is an idea that is prevalent. Deleting words once said or written, like erasing material evidence of deeds done, is a civilising procedure. Editing does the same job as attempts to cover up or prettify our physical selves. Both create a necessary distance from where we are unable to pick out that which is unpalatable. I do not see such screening as negative, but rather as a necessary and positive stance to avoid some unpleasant behaviours and events that can result from revealing too much or failing to establish boundaries. A complete whitewash, however, is almost never possible.

Karla Black