Join Fruitmarket Edinburgh to hear artist Karla Black on how Barry Le Va’s work inspires and informs her approach to materials and continues to have relevance for artists working today. In conversation with Fruitmarket Director, Fiona Bradley.
The work of Le Va has long been a touchstone for Black. Sharing a use of fragmented and scattered materials, including powders – chalk and flour for Le Va; plaster dust, pigment and soil for Black – both artists make floor-based work that explores the transient nature of materials. Both practices rail against the apparent permanence of traditional sculpture, revealing, as Black puts it ‘that material in this world is only ever either flying together or flying apart and it’s only the limited experience we as human beings can have of time that leads us to believe that an object is permanent.’ Similarly, Le Va sought ‘to eliminate sculpture as a finished, totally resolved object’ and maintain its potential energy in a state of flux.
Karla Black represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2011 with her exhibition, At Fault, curated by Fruitmarket. The new refurbished and extended Fruitmarket opened in 2021 with her exhibition Karla Black: sculptures (2001-2021) details for a retrospective.
Barry Le Va: In a State of Flux is at Fruitmarket from 16.11.24–02.02.25. The first-ever major exhibition in the UK of the work of ground-breaking American artist Barry Le Va and the first comprehensive museum exhibition anywhere since his death in 2021.
Location
Fruitmarket, EH1 1DF
