How Not to Know, 2014, a collapsed sculptural window of paint-smeared cellophane, introduces Scottish artist Karla Black’s first solo exhibition at David Zwirner (through April 12). On the other side, pale luminous stripes of pink and white chalk powder abut a mottled blue plane in a formation that recalls a vast and fragile flag. Black’s pastel palette is unsaturated but not unassuming, evoking traditionally gendered color schemes, but the work’s delicate formal qualities are not shorthand for femininity. The powder remains on the brink of drifting away even as it sinks into the cracks and dimples of the concrete gallery floor. Although the exhibition fills most of the space, the wrong gesture or exhalation could easily destroy its order. It generates a haptic temptation, requiring effort to look but not touch.
Vertical strips of Scotch tape run floor to ceiling, marked by the artist’s fingerprints. The tape gently sways, reflecting lines of light. One corner of the piece is broken up by dribbled marks and crumbling fragments of bath bombs. These casual gestures are an intrusion into a system, subtle yet unanticipated interjections to measured arrangements. This juncture is one of several places where traces of the hand and readymade products combine in the artist’s sculptural vocabulary.
Black fluidly combines drug-store products with traditional art supplies, and conceives the overlapping pieces that make up this exhibition as individual sculptures rather than a single installation. Bisecting the room, small flat works hang on intersecting tape and threads, each seemingly on the verge between two states. One is composed of petal-like nail polish remover pads stained in the faintest blue, recalling Helen Frankenthaler’s color fields. Other hanging forms include a suspended cellophane work and paintings on torn paper, which are bracketed by For However Long, 2014, another collection of circular nail polish remover pads. A configuration of four lifesize chalk-covered paper objects rest near the back wall.
Black refutes interrogations of meaning, choosing instead to question the object’s position in real time and space. In a 2011 video interview she asked, “What are the consequences of this sculpture?” Her combination of unfixed yet carefully arranged components creates a tension between formlessness and form. At first glance, her insistence on the autonomy of these objects as single works could seem perplexing, but there is a more layered operation in her work: the gesture of gathering, of forming a temporary convergence of materials, followed by their eventual dispersion out into the world.
A version of this article will appear in the June/July 2014 issue of Modern Painters magazine.
