Tension is intrinsic in Karen Black’s works but there is a new focus on the artist’s subject and how she has come to treat it in alternative frequency. The juxtapositions are still there, abstraction and figuration, violence and care, body and landscape, broad swathes and the finest of marks. These works are a family, made in tandem — a series of female figures painted in an embrace within their own charged and emotional landscape. They have relationships to each other, but Black is at the centre, orchestrating the very vibration of each into a crescendo of exquisite tumult that is the experience of this exhibition as a whole.
As the women in her works stretch across the entire canvas, mountains, matter, seas, and the weather settle in amongst them. Relative scale is put aside, and new worlds take shape. Lush ecosystems of interesting and exquisite life forms share a space, but their coexistence is ambiguous. Whilst there could be nourishment, there are moments of potential foreboding or a feeding off of. A vast and sometimes confronting spectrum of feelings are also within these worlds: ecstasy, fear, desperation and desire. These are works of plurality; the lines we see are muddied just as the boundaries of thoughts and feelings they conjure are too.
Within these worlds Black is layering an emotional terrain into a code of colour and texture, showing us what might lie at the very apex of opposing forces, of things coming together. She can show impact and affect way beyond the literal bounds of a painting. True to life, her worlds are not presented as simply good or bad, rather Black shows us the rapture and the wrench interaction can cause. Life can be hard, complex, shocking…and it is Black who is unafraid to work through this in her practice, bringing it out of the studio and into view. All of life hums at its own frequency, changing and adapting to what lies within and outside of our physical bounds. This is our indisputable connection to one another, a connection to be careful of and one that Black has continued to explore.
In alternative frequency, Black’s intuitive relationship with paint is revealed at its most raw, and most courageous. We see how opposition in her world creates energy and force, a juncture to truly explore, ruin and rebuild. In her studio, paintings are made in the round, marks are moulded and stretched, allowing for a depth and movement on canvas that is Black’s own. Whilst it is where she has ultimate control, as is her way with oppositions, it is also where she chooses to let it go. This push-pull is a signal Black uses to step further, go higher, let go, experiment more. It is the signal itself that becomes exhausted, not Black, whose vitality is undeniable.
Words by Gina Mobayed