Better

Karla Black’s work ‘prioritizes material experience over language as a way to learn about and understand the world’. Her abstract sculpture typically combines cosmetic or domestic materials such as powder, soap, gels and pastes with  more traditional media such as paper, plaster and paint. This work belongs to a recent series of delicate, suspended, pastel works that resemble pillows, the title suggesting a gesture of care.

Karla Black (b. 1972, Alexandria) has held solo exhibitions at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2016 and 2009); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015); Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (2013); Dallas Museum of Art; Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2012); Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2010); Kunstverein in Hamburg; Modern Art Oxford and Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2009). She represented Scotland at the Biennale in Venice in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in the same year. Black’s work is held in several major collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York and Tate, London. She lives and works in Glasgow.