Karla Black, "The Academy (earlier)", 2024, Bechtler Stiftung

The immersive, room-filling sculpture The Academy (earlier) by Karla Black plunges the visitor into a world of pink, peach, and yellow. Black’s ephemeral works—whether strands of paper hanging from the ceiling or fragile floor works made of wafer-thin layers of scattered powder—reference the minimal and conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, Black expands the classic concept of sculpture through a process-oriented, performative approach to both atypical materials and materials with existing cultural connotations. Black has always prioritized material experience over language and representational imagery as a means of moving through and understanding the world. In this age of two-dimensional screens, the immersion and absorption in physical reality induced by her work is more necessary than ever to safeguard our spiritual and embodied humanity.