卡拉布莱克

source: modernistaestheticblogspot

“Wish List is constructed of sheets of sugar paper held together with hair glue, superglue, and nail polish and then creased, folded, crumpled and twisted into an opulent swag that is suspended from the ceiling hammock like, by two strips or ribbon. Rubbed with chalk dust and plaster, its largely pink surface supports a glop of petroleum jelly coloured with yellow acrylic, and the shredded remains of two household rubber gloves, one pink and the other yellow.”
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: saatchigallery

Karla Black’s work draws from a multiplicity of artistic traditions from expressionist painting, land art, performance, to formalism. Her large-scale sculptures incorporate modest everyday substances, along with very traditional art-making materials to create abstract formations. Black chooses her media for their tactile aesthetic appeal: the familiarity of the texture of cellophane or the scent of cosmetics bridges the experience of tangible matter with the intimacy of memory or the subconscious. Black’s process is intensely physical and this energy is conveyed through her work’s ‘impromptu’ staging; this suggestion of performance psychologically involves the viewer with the making process, provoking instinctive responses to her precarious assemblages.

Black’s approach to sculpture is often described as holistic: her assemblages are more than the sum of their parts, each element interconnects physical, psychological, and theoretical stimuli which are both self-referential and relate to art as a wider-world experience. Her work absorbs art historical influences such as Joseph Beuys’s social sculpture and Eva Hesse’s organic minimalism. In Unpreventable Within, a large blanket of cling film is draped across the floor; a watery, landscape terrain, it evokes both vulnerability and protection. Coated with baby oil gel and paint, the liquid balms the surface and collects in its crevices as pools, creating a microcosmic ecology suggestive of generation and sustainability.

Spanning the gallery as a floating ‘painting’, Black’s Made To Wait hovers in the space less as an object than a screen: an almost invisible field of cellophane, a translucent divide or portal that makes the view through it seem strangely distant or unreal. The bottom edge of the sheeting is coated in paint, interspersed with common drug store cosmetics: tooth-paste, moisturiser, hair gel, and nail varnish, creamy substances of surface beauty. For Black, these materials become synonymous with a civlised veneer; an allusion to painting, as well as to personal maintenance and improvement, converging subconscious expression with actual embodiment. In Made To Wait these ideas become inherent, almost as an anchor, in the piece’s literal and metaphoric suspension which blurs the bounds between perception and introspection, self-cognition and otherness.

Black explains her haptic approach to making in relation to psychology, and cites Melanie Klein’s play technique – a method used to analyse very young children through their negotiation of the physical world rather than through language – as a contextual source. For Black, this sublingual articulation mirrors the sculptural process and offers the possibility for the work to achieve its own communication and agency. Nothing Is A Must is made from chalked sugar paper. It’s uplifted exaggerated form is like an open bag, made simultaneously monumental and flaccid.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: artchinacn

还不知道卡拉·布莱克（Karla Black）？那你需要了解一下。2011年已到，这标志着今年的威尼斯双年展也越来越近了，而 布莱克会代表苏格兰参加这次双年展，足见其重要程度已不可小觑。

现年38岁的布莱克以其雕塑作品被世界所认可。她能完美地把实用主义和顽固的艺术想法嫁接到一起。但是她的雕塑作品非 常脆弱，你很难把“效用”和这些作品联系起来。粉末，颜料，粉笔，聚乙烯塑料，布莱克把这些材料堆砌起来，并把玻璃纸 和塑料布铺成具有玩闹特性的样子——一定程度上展示了犹如女性一般娇柔易碎，同时却又有一种筋肉感觉的韧性。“你觉得这 些材料看起来像是短暂的、瞬息之间的东西，”布莱克说，“但其实它们真的很重。如果我布置它们的时候不小心掉在地上， 地板会开个洞。”

最近在诺丁汉举办的“英国艺术展”中，她的用土和石灰建造了一座大金字塔，上面覆盖着黄色的麦片和红色的肥皂，用来昭 示岁月的沉淀。“我喜欢地球，”布莱克说，“我经常使用地球所给予我的素材来完成展览。比如，煤炭来源于树木，石油来源 于动物。我使用的粉笔，则来自千年来海洋生物的尸体。”她的艺术是关乎美学的，旨在延续那些儿时没有说出口的冲动。那 些有着粉嫩色彩的蛋糕一样的雕塑很让人想咬一口，但它们都来自于废弃物。由废弃到有可食用的欲望，布莱克做的不错。

在这个重要的2011年，布莱克会在2月的时候参加泰特不列颠博物馆的群展，她在威尼斯的展览将于6月4日开幕：“我真的很 想在威尼斯双年展上做一些很基本、很孩子气又很实验的作品。威尼斯就像一个大的商业野兽，要提放是否它会淹没你。”