Scottish Artist Karla Black has a solo presentation at the 54th
International Art Exhibition — la Biennale di Venezia, the world’s
largest and most prestigious showcase for contemporary visual arts. The
exhibition is curated by The Fruitmarket Gallery and is presented, as in
2009, at Palazzo Pisani (S. Marina) until 27 November 2011.

2011 Turner Prize nominee Karla Black presents an exhibition of new abstract
sculptures that hover between energy and mass—pulverised, atomised,
piled, layered, supported, suspended and spilling out onto the floor; a
mass of colour and material that fills the 15th century Venetian Palazzo
Pisani. These ‘almost objects’ have been intimately and painstakingly
worked in situ by the artist into exquisitely detailed aesthetic forms.
While not exactly site-specific, these works have been made with their
physical and conceptual context in mind.

In this exhibition Black presents forms and compositions in Vaseline and marble dust, sugar
paper and eye-shadow, soil, powder paint and plaster, polythene,
cellophane and soap, in crumbling, peeling washes or dustings of high
key mid-colours like peach, baby blue and pastel pink. Black describes
these works as being ‘caught between thoughtless gestures and seriously
obsessive attempts at beauty’.

The exhibition is accompanied by a
new publication, designed by Karla Black as part of her presentation in
Venice. With images of the exhibition in the Palazzo Pisani, as well as
other images of recent exhibitions, and a new essay by Briony Fer, the
publication offers an experience of Karla Black’s work that is both
parallel to the exhibition and illuminating of it.