MELBOURNE.- For their final show of 2022, Sullivan+Strumpf present a major solo exhibition from Sydney-based artist Karen Black, opening Thursday November 24 and running through to Saturday 17 December 2022. Renowned for her intimate practice encompassing painting, drawing, ceramics, and sculpture, Gentle Pulse, is a stunning new body of work where the full spectrum of human relations is expressed, just as Black’s unique vision of the world is unearthed through her approach to art making.

Over many years Black has paid heed to the concept of radical care and in this latest series of works she aims to rethink her artistic practice as something that can be more open, more kind, more soft, more loving. Gentleness – as the show’s title suggests, is an active participant in the exhibition, and can – as Black so expertly demonstrates, be adopted as a transformative philosophy for art and for living.

In the making of these works she has intentionally slowed down the painting process, retraining both mind and hand to decelerate into softness. Every brushstroke on her canvases has been tenderly placed, and in contrast to her earlier paintings, a decision to reveal more vulnerability, captured in blank spaces and bodies left unadorned and undressed – unprotected, Black notes, by costuming.

According to Black’s vision, gentleness - like radical care, can be a form of resistance, one that requires slowness, consideration, community, and strength. Both – she hopes and believes, can provide a roadmap towards a new, and essentially kinder, human future.

Over many years Black has proven herself a dedicated subscriber to ambiguity, and this comes across in both her artworks and the words that she uses to describe and invoke them. Frequently employed within a disparaging phrase, the word “ambiguity” is well… ambiguous, is and of itself. But at its core it is about the human quality of being open to more than one interpretation, and this is something that Black revels in.

An enduring feature of her colourful paintings is the layering of works – upon each canvas the viewer will find a series of landscapes that can be read individually, or combined, resulting in diverse interpretations.

In the words of writer and curator Elyse Goldfinch, ‘Held within the tension between canvas and paint, Black presents whispers of things visible only through glimpses of shadow and shape. Interiors and exteriors bleed into one another, and bodies become fluid things, liquefied through paint’. [Sullivan+Strumpf Magazine, November 2022].

Black also loves words, and the potential that lies within, as evidenced by the titles of her artworks and the inclusion of a solitary neon text-based work. Rendered in the artists’ own handwriting, lifted directly from the pages of her notebook, is the word feelings. Lit up in a bright lilac hue, a colour that Black says is associated with friendliness and open mindedness, it’s both summation and invitation.

In this soothingly provocative show Black invites the viewer to consider and confront their responses to her work, and to life’s potential itself. To stay connected, to withdraw, or to get radical.

The exhibition will also include a towering raw clay sculptural installation that Black will create onsite over two days, building on the outcomes of a recent collaboration with Flack Studio and Ace Hotel Sydney for Sydney Design Week.

The collaboration, PLAY, saw Ace Hotel’s café and the adjoining Foy Lane taken over by more than 300 community members, taking part in a weekend of freehand making, led by Black.

Karen Black is a Sydney-based artist whose work occupies the scope of human relations through physical and psychological encounters. Her work engages with the tensions and contradictions of desire, emotion, and the self. Working across painting, drawing, ceramics, and sculpture, she transforms traditional representations of the body and portraiture through abstraction. Often ambiguous, Black’s work contains an intimacy and vulnerability that comes from her interest in radical care and gentleness.

Her work has been exhibited in major Australian institutions including: the Art Gallery of NSW (Sydney); Newcastle Art Gallery (Newcastle); Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne); Shepparton Art Museum (Shepparton); National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne); Campbelltown Arts Centre (Sydney); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne); Griffith University Art Museum (Brisbane); Monash University Museum of Art (Melbourne), as well as presented internationally in Tokyo, Taipei, Singapore and Hong Kong. In 2017, she was a recipient of the Artspace One Year Studio Program and the 2019 Glasshouse / Stonehouse Residency, Chenaud, France. She has been a finalist in art awards including the prestigious Archibald and Sir John Sulman Prizes held at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Black’s work is included in numerous public collections including National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne); Australian War Memorial (Canberra); Shepparton Art Museum, (Shepparton); Museum of Brisbane, (Brisbane); Griffith University Art Museum (Brisbane); Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, (Brisbane); Monash University Museum of Art, (Melbourne); Artbank (national); and the Salsali Private Museum, (Dubai).