Karla Black at Stuart Shave/Modern Art

Karla Black's extraordinary rise to art stardom over the past years has seen the Glasgow MA rife with impersonators, her first solo show for Stuart Shave shows the unique beauty of her work on a more intimate scale.

The first room contains a curious window display, halfway between an experimental visual merchandiser on acid and the detritus from a child's birthday party, complete with polystyrene cake with lurid pink icing, pastel streamers and decimated party bags. The leftovers of an 80s tween sleepover, powder pinks and blues, sticky with eyeshadow, a busy feminine mess.

The back room in contrast contains a large bold chain link structure rendered in the most fragile of materials, a huge aggressive symbol of restraint rendered ethereal. Powder paint pigment, again in a delicate pastel tone dusted over the work and sprinkled onto the floor, already being carried away on the soles of people's shoes only minutes after the gallery opened. Everything about the work softly screams impermanence, any minute I expect the sellotape to unstick, the cellophane to drop and the sculptures to return to their separate original components.

Down the stairs is a delicate falling of rainbow of pastel sanitary/doggy-doo/nappy bags, its weightless bag-in-the-wind quality broken by large hooks holding it firmly in place, making me realise with all their fragility and laissez-faire appearance the sculptures are very deliberate and strong settled arrangements.

Downstairs is a beautiful installation, the large white gallery space, a perfect setting for the three boulders of primary colour plastic (of course- still pastel!). Although translucent and held together by sellotape again, they take on a solid and impressive weight.

This is a really absorbing show, and although messy and busy at points it still holds an overall serenity, as the impact of the sculptures becomes a perfect backdrop for contemplation on medium, form, femininity and ultimately sculpture itself.

Paul Kindersley

Karla Black

Modern Art

23/25 Eastcastle Street, London W1

23 February - 24 March 2012

Rosa Loy: Tautropfen

There seems to be an endless supply of lovely German words that don't quite translate into English - sehnsucht (which is also the name of one of the works in this show), unheimlich etc - and tautropfen could be another to add to the list. Google translate tells me it means dew but the press release for the show makes it dewdrops (so there is a tiny bit of discrepancy there) and relates it to the way that the works in the show - which are predominantly on paper - are formed from the artists thoughts of the day and night before.

Rosa Loy, Der Bienenkorb, 2011, casein on canvas, 60x80cm

Rosa Loy is one of the Leipzig school and it is exciting to see her showing in the UK, but I'm not sure that this show has the most coherent selection of her work. The three paintings on display feature  awkwardly positioned composite girls - part 50s pin-ups, Social Realist workers and sixth formers at Mallory Towers - interacting with each other and evocative objects, such as beehives, in a slightly dispassionate way. But they do not really fit the 'dewdrops' brief which applies much more directly to the swiftly executed small pencil and watercolour works.

Rosa Loy, Inspiration, 2011, pencil and watercolour on paper, 23x31cm

These 'dewdrops' on paper are less constrained than the bigger paintings but are too stylistically varied to hang together as a serious body of work. Individually there are works which are quite stunning in an illustration-from-the-strangest-of-all-fairy-tale-book-way with Wizard of Oz like floating houses and fruit laden trees with faces. But they are really little more than fleeting ideas from a sketchbook. The show would have been more convincing with a whole room of more judiciously selected, stronger paper works.

Rosa Loy,  Freie Gedanken, 2012, pencil and watercolour on paper, 31x23cm

Rosa Loy (and indeed her husband Neo Rauch) seem to be very undershown in the UK so it was a treat to see this small collection of her work. But for her next solo show in the UK it would be fantastic to see a show which really hangs together - maybe even a serious collection of her paintings.

Cathy Lomax


Rosa Loy, 'Tautropfen'
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery
6 Heddon Street, London W1
23 February - 15 March 2012

Waxy Faces and Acres of Flesh: 'Lucian Freud Portraits' at National Portrait Gallery, London

The National Portrait Gallery's addition to 2012s bunch of blockbuster shows is a huge gathering together of portraits by the recently deceased Lucian Freud.

Freud's later works are very familiar; acres of creamy flesh, flaccid members and ghastly blue veins. There is no sign of Kate Moss in this collection but Leigh Bowery, Big Sue and numerous other models are very much in evidence. Skipping past these my favourite works are from early on in Freud's career - much smaller and flatter than the big flesh pots they are somehow both more tender and darker.

Lucien Freud, Boy Smoking, 1950-1

Boy Smoking is quite possibly my favourite Freud painting. In common with other work of the early period the skin tones are almost deathly pallid with a curious waxy quality and the features quite stylised. The boy himself looks like an archetypal teenager of the time - part Brando part teddy boy. The painting is very small and tightly framed - constrained within its surroundings - with only the languidly placed cigarette leading the eye out of the frame. 

Lucian Freud, A Girl (detail), 1946, conte, crayon & chalk

A Girl, 1946, a conte crayon drawing, shows a downward looking woman with almost schematically painted hair which was quite typical of Freud's work at the time. What raises this above the ordinary is her left eye which within this closely observed work has only a slither of white showing and consequently is almost completely black.

Lucian Freud, Girl with a Kitten, 1947, oil on canvas.

Girl With a Kitten, 1947 is an extraordinarily unsettling painting. A girl looks blankly out of the canvas while her right hand holds a kitten. The kitten stares directly at us and appears to be unperturbed by her fingers which are tightly wound around its tiny neck. This painting along with a number of other nearby works is of Freud's first wife - Kitty Garman who described sitting for Freud as 'like being arranged'

Cathy Lomax

Lucian Freud, 'Portraits' 

National Portrait Gallery, London

9 February - 27 May 2012

Unbearable Lightness: 'Time and Memory: Cecilia Edefalk and Gunnel Wåhlstrand at Parasol Unit, London N1'

By the Window, 2003–2004, ink-wash on paper, 151 x 198 cm, The Michael Storåkers Collection
photograph Björn Larsson  

Straightforward photorealist paintings can be easily consumed and dismissed, but Gunnel Wåhlstrand’s large-scale, black-ink washes on paper are hauntingly captivating. Some of the melancholic figures look stiff and slightly awkward, perhaps due to her precise, skillful style, but the gentle washes suggest a loving hand has resurrected these papery ghosts of the past. It is not surprising then, that the images document a personal history and are taken from the artist’s family photographs of pristine interiors, manicured gardens and relatives she never met.

It is disappointing that Wåhlstrand’s White Peacocks, 2007/9 is not part of this exhibition as it perfectly exemplifies the radiant results of her restrictive technique. There is a remarkable white peacock at Leeds Castle in Kent that stands out and glows next to it’s gaudy, colourful counterparts, and a similar, luminous quality shines through Wåhlstrand’s washes. Her punishing process is unfathomably meticulous. Edges are left slightly ragged, revealing the careful build-up of layers, and the permanence of ink means there must be no going back once a mark is made.

Less interesting are the suggested similarities between the paintings’ time-consuming technique and the act of developing photographs. Investigations into the relationship between painting and photography have been done to death and surely put to bed by Richter’s recent retrospective at Tate Modern.

Memory, the questioning of images and a forensic interrogation of photographic sources does, however, link the two painters in this exhibition. Downstairs, Cecilia Edefalk’s black and white paintings of Laurel and Hardy are comedic, but also poignant, nostalgic and underscore the crossover. Edefalk’s paintings repeat content, pointing to a conceptual approach with an emphasis on process. Initially copied from photographs, her paintings multiply, one leading to another. Surprisingly, some paintings in the show are over 20 years old and appeared in Vitamin P almost 10 years ago. It is well documented that Edefalk has made few images and that painting, for her, is a particularly slow and deliberate process.

At The Moment Untitled, 1998, oil on canvas, 140cm diameter

Sculptures of Birch trees held up by clumsy armatures seem cliché coming from a Swedish artist, but lend themselves to the surrounding series of paintings that repeatedly attempt to capture a white statue, framed by foliage and illuminated in the spooky darkness. This section works particularly well, but the overall collection of Edefalk’s works feels disjointed and at odds with her process where things are visibly linked through repetition.

Double White Venus with Mask, 2008, tempera on linen, 60x40cm
private collection, photography Carl Henrik Tillberg, © Cecilia Edefalk

Painting photographs to investigate personal history, processes, memory or the uniqueness of the painted image may not be innovative, cutting edge or challenging any more, but nevertheless, this is a thought-provoking and sensitive exhibition from an intriguing, well-matched pair.

Alli Sharma


Time and Memory: Cecilia Edefalk and Gunnel Wåhlstrand

Parasol Unit, London N1 until 12 Feb 2012

Rainbows, Fireworks and Blue Sky: 'Turner and the Elements' at Turner Contemporary, Margate

The day the press went to Margate could not have been better chosen. Blue, blue skies and a fiercely low winter sun infused the North Kent seaside town with a sense of spring optimism which overcame the occasional glimpses of boarded up shops and appalling town planning.

I have visited the Turner Contemporary once before - I saw the last show Nothing in the World but Youth  - which although it contained mostly work I have seen before and was massively overhung with a kind of everything but the kitchen sink approach, was still enjoyable. NITWBY featured quite a few works by a youthful Turner and I think that many of the visitors to this new gallery expect to see something by the artist the gallery takes it name from. So taking the touring show Turner and the Elements after its run in Germany and Poland must have been an easy decision for the gallery director.

I am not generally a massive fan of Turner - I find his grand oil paintings too swishy and indistinct. Turner and the Elements focusses mainly on small sketchy watercolours which to my mind are much more interesting and contemporary looking. Quickly made and still fresh these works on paper are free from the detailed additions of people and boats that many of the oils have and thus avoid the twee factor.

JMW Turner, Storm at Sea, circa 1820-30, watercolour on paper, ©Tate, London 2011

The show is divided into elements - earth, air, water and fire - which as the curator explained were a major preoccupation of Turner and his contemporaries. This is apparent in Turner's eye for the spectacular, relishing the natural - sunsets, rainbows, new moons - just as much as the unnatural - smelting works, ship wrecks and fireworks. As is often said of many great historic painters I can imagine that today Turner might have been a film director. One particularly strange OTT painting The Evening of the Deluge features a swirling vortex of birds that pull you into the centre of the painting like Dorothy's twister while a crocodile looks on - Hitchcock's The Birds as well as The Wizard of Oz are the obvious filmic comparisons.

Turner came to Margate as a child and returned often throughout his life staying in a house more or less on the site that the gallery now occupies. This link with the gallery and the town is explored in the show by the addition of some of his Margate paintings. The coming home of these works - and the time this has taken to happen - is quite moving.

JMW Turner, The New Moon or 'I've Lost My Boat, You Shan't Have Your Hoop', exhibited 1840, watercolour on paper, ©Tate, London 2011

Turner said that 'the skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe' - referring no doubt to the beautiful sunsets and huge sky-over-sea view that the North Kent coast gives. But on this sunny February day I couldn't help thinking that he was referring to the loveliness of a blue sky at the seaside.

Cathy Lomax


Turner and the Elements
Turner Contemporary, Margate
28 January - 13 May 2012