Karla Black

Karla Black's exhibition at Rodder, a new art gallery set within a Neo-Renaissance apartment in New York, extends the Scottish artist's long inquiry into the art of disarray. A Post-Minimalist respect for materials and their natural inclinations to form, decay, and shift over time runs through her practice, and here the domestic, Rococo sensibility of the apartment setting becomes part of the work. Black's installation is emphatically ornamental. She introduces mirror into the rooms, sited on floor and wall through stencils derived from Rococo pattern books and freely smeared with oil paints to cosmetic effect. Mirrors nearly covered in pastel pigment become paintings in their own right, layered like a cloudscape, while three large gestural sculptures rest in the space, oblivious of weighty matters. Nature at the Court (2026) flaunts gesture, confection, and confusion at once, bulging from one vantage and hollow from another. Where sculpture is conventionally grounded, Black's sculptural riffs are gestural and made of fugitive, cosmetic materials, predisposed to complication rather than complexity. Mirrored elements crowd corners and shelves, and a bookcase carries a spill of tiny works, the artist's fondness for clutter undermining the propriety of a room where good taste is expected.