As blank canvases go, the revitalised spaces of Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery offer more potential than most. The artist responsible for inaugurating the new space is Scottish Turner Prize nominee Karla Black. What she has created is less of a show and more of a full-scale material ambush.
For ‘Karla Black: Sculptures (2001-2021)’, opening on 7 July, the artist is ‘reimagining a retrospective’ armed with 30 existing sculptures and new commissions that respond directly to the Fruitmarket’s rejuvenated spaces.
It was summer 2019 when the Edinburgh gallery last welcomed visitors. Some £4.3m, a doubled footprint and a sustainability driven reimagining by Edinburgh-based Reiach and Hall Architects later, and the gallery has once again opened its doors.
The gallery’s transformation doubles its square footage but also brings the Fruitmarket’s historic building – a former fruit and vegetable warehouse – into active cultural use. In the original structure, the innate rhythms of the rooms and the natural light that floods the upper floor remain intact.
Continuing the theme of curious past lives, the gallery has also expanded into a second historic warehouse, which most recently housed the Electric Circus nightclub. This steel-framed, brick-lined building maintains its rawness and the architects have opened it out by removing the upper floor, reusing the joists and floorboards rather than bringing in new materials. The resulting space will lend itself to theatre and music, spoken word and visual art exhibitions.
Black’s show is a lesson in materiality, and these sculptures are constructed from her signatures: cardboard, sugar paper, polystyrene, polythene, Cellophane, Sellotape, glass, mirror, net, Vaseline, plaster powder, powder paint, medicines, cosmetics and thread. The works, both large and small scale, sprawl across brick walls, appear in gallery windows and spill across floors. The existing works set the stage for the pièce de résistance, Waiver For Shade, a major commission Black created within the new warehouse space in the weeks before it opened.
As Fiona Bradley, director of the Fruitmarket Gallery, says of Black’s show, ‘there is a defiant force to her work – it is demanding and disruptive as well as beautiful and inspiring. It is because of this that we invited her to be the first artist to work in the newly reopened Fruitmarket: we value artistic experimentation and we want her to really challenge the new space.’
The show comes a decade after the Fruitmarket curated Black’s presentation for Scotland in Venice at the 54th International Biennale. But ‘Karla Black: Sculptures (2001–2021) details for a retrospective’ marks their first collaboration on home turf.
For Black, her materials are not just a means to create, but, when activated, form their own vocabulary. ‘I prioritise material experience over language as a way to understand the world or move through it. And I try to make sculpture that, within itself, accepts the fact that the object is a fallacy – that material in this world is only ever either flying together or flying apart,’ Black says in a new book published to coincide with her show at the Fruitmarket. ‘I use both natural and cultural materials the same, for their physical properties. And I use them to keep hold of what I think art really is – a raw, animal creative moment.’
INFORMATION
’Karla Black: Sculptures (2001–2021) details for a retrospective’, 7 July-21 November 2021, fruitmarket.co.uk
ADDRESS
Fruitmarket Gallery
Market St
Edinburgh, EH1 1DF
-
U2 in Las Vegas review: a monumental sonic and visual spectacleU2 help transform the Las Vegas skyline with a genre-redefining multimedia rock show, buoyed by high-profile artistic collaborations and groundbreaking tech
-
When Doshi Levien met Giulio Cappellini
Designers Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien look back on their collaboration with design visionary Giulio Cappellini, Guest Editor of the Wallpaper* October 2023 issue
-
We spend the night at The Peninsula London
We spend a night at The Peninsula London, which raises the bar for the premier Asian hospitality specialist
-
New glass sculpture creates a verdant wonderland at Apple’s Cupertino HQ
‘Mirage’ at Apple Park is the work of Zeller & Moye and artist Katie Paterson, a shimmering array of glass columns that snakes through the grounds of the company’s monumental HQ
-
Man Ray’s sculptures go on show in New York
‘Man Ray: Other Objects’ opens at Luxembourg + Co, New York, revealing their author’s ‘artistic revolution’
-
The best London art exhibitions to see now
Your guide to the best London art exhibitions, as chosen by the Wallpaper* arts desk
-
Erwin Wurm’s pop-coloured fantasy land at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
In Erwin Wurm’s first UK museum show, ‘Trap of the Truth’, the artist transforms Yorkshire Sculpture Park into a slightly warped wonderland (10 June 2023 – 28 April 2024)
-
Sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro transforms Fendi’s Rome HQ into a theatre of myth and magic
Fendi’s Roman HQ sets the scene for ‘Il Grande Teatro delle Civiltà’ a major show by Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro, who has also created a one-off edition of the house’s iconic Peekaboo bag. Read more in the July 2023 Issue of Wallpaper*, on newsstands 8 June
-
Superflex on building an underwater city for fish: ‘there are different rules down there’
Danish art collective Superflex discuss their ambitious Super Reef, an underwater urbanisation project aiming to restore more than 55 square kilometres of stone reef in Danish seas
-
Raffaele Salvoldi stacks hundreds of marble blocks for dazzling Milan installation
For a Milan Design Week 2023 installation, Italian artist Raffaele Salvoldi teams up with marble brand Salvatori to create architectural sculptures comprising hundreds of marble blocks
-
John Pawson unveils first-ever sculpture in Tokyo exhibition
At The Mass, Tokyo, British architect John Pawson stages his first solo exhibition in Japan, revealing his first sculpture and a new photography series
