Karla Black’s current exhibition at the Kunstraum Dornbirn places a magical art experience in a magical landscape, with the picturesque region near Lake Constance in western Austria serving as an integral backdrop. Channeling a poetic flow, Black has installed a kind of abstract theater that brings the outdoors in, to interact with two site-specific installations—Safety As A Stance and Looking Glass (picture grid) (both 2025). Featuring delicately colored hanging lengths of toilet paper, mirrors, and blooming paper forms, as well as her signature floor-based arrangements of colored powders and cosmetic materials, these works fill a 350-square-meter hall, responding to a unique space that blends the rough and industrial with surprising decorative details.
Robert Preece: What were your primary concerns when planning this show? How did you approach the 11-meter-high ceiling and the unusual appearance of the interior walls?
Karla Black: I think of the works as two separate sculptures. While my work skirts in between and up against the mediums of painting, installation, and performance art, it is, in the end, resolutely sculpture in that it has its autonomy through its defined edges and titles. When I first visited Kunstraum Dornbirn, my main thought and concern was: How can my sculptures have a presence in this room without just being engulfed and dominated by it? The room is so big and has such volume—it’s cavernous.
I thought that the ceiling height was very exciting and its potential wonderful, but it was also intimidating. What struck me most about the building was how it has the characteristics of an industrial factory/warehouse and contrastingly beautiful, ornate 19th-century details. I worked not only under the inspiring influence of the freedom that such a “rough” space gives an artist, but also under the refined Rococo feeling that the windows and metalwork provide, which led me to “reference” Versailles and its Hall of Mirrors.
RP: Did you make a lot of sketches first, or was there a model?
KB: I don’t tend to make sketches or models because I prefer to work freely with the materials at the time. However, I did make a diagram to describe to technicians how I would like the toilet paper to be hung—in lines of a brick formation, with a repeating color pattern.
RP: What is your process like? Do you work with assistants? In the studio, on site, or both?
KB: I don’t work with assistants. I work alone in the studio, and then I had help from the great artist-technicians at Dornbirn—Roland and Thomas—and from the director, Thomas Häusle. There is a supportive team of people working there. The install had the same pattern as most of my installs. I like to work with the technicians over the first few days to do the difficult, laborious elements. In this case, the technicians hung the toilet paper strands in two teams, using two Skyjacks, over a period of three days; and then I had some time alone in the space, which I like, to sieve out the powder.
Some works were made in the studio. I sent two standing sculptures from the studio, and I made the paper spheres and powdered polythene forms there, too. Then, the laying of the powder, painting the mirrors on the windows, and hanging the spheres were done in the space.
RP: How long did it take to install the work? Were there lots of challenges?
KB: It took about 10 days—with one or two days off. It was very straightforward. We were well organized. The technicians went up and down on Skyjack vehicles to hang the toilet paper, which is stapled to the ceiling on little squares of cardboard.
RP: The windows are closed, so what sorts of simple actions cause movement in the work?
KB: Lots of air comes through the space. It is on the verge of being an outdoor space. When the door is open, the wind blows in, but the toilet paper strands are held down by the heavy powder piled onto the ends that touch the floor. People walking through also stir the air, causing the work to move. A little sparrow flew in one day while the door was open and continued to live high up in the eaves. It would sometimes fly through the toilet paper strands, but it seemed to know how to navigate without touching them. It never left any marks or caused any harm to the work and mostly hid itself away. There is also a bat living in the roof that sometimes appears at night.
RP: Your color selections are very sensitive to the interior walls. Did you need to spend a lot of time figuring that out, or was it a quick decision?
KB: It was a fairly quick decision but, yes, I chose the color of the powders and the toilet papers to “blend” with the color of the walls and floor.
RP: Looking Glass (picture grid), which reflects Safety As A Stance, the surrounding interior, and the outside world, is magical. It creates an interesting and subtle focal point in the installation, maybe like an abstract chapel. Was it difficult work out the organization, or did it just happen?
KB: Thomas Häusle was instrumental in making my idea to mirror the windows a reality. I wanted to reference the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and how it brings the landscape inside to expand the room and merge it with nature. The arched windows, demarcated into small rectangles of glass, are the same design as Versailles. Thomas had the mirrors cut to the exact size of the panes, and I also asked for some ovals to break it up, introduce the idea of portraiture, and show more of the grass and trees outside. He first tried to attach them with magnets, which didn’t quite work out, so in the end they were glued to the glass.
My work exists in a place between painting and sculpture, and the mirrors join the sculptural forms in space with floating marks in paint in such a way that it can be difficult to distinguish which is which. The mirrors are also important in emphasizing one of the main points of my work, which is to try to ignore image and the figure/face in favor of a material experience that absorbs one into the more enjoyable and spiritual reality of individual, connected physical experience.
RP: Soft blue and pink paper forms hang amid the toilet paper lines, acting as focal points. They recall abstracted flower buds prior to blooming. Could you tell me about them?
KB: These forms allude to the Rococo and perhaps also to the Baroque. Sculpturally, I am much more captivated by the fabrics than I am by the figures wearing them. I am absorbed by the flounces and soft amorphous forms, nature and landscapes, and the closeness of such forms to raw material. I almost wanted to try to make an ornamental garden, again, thinking about Versailles. For example, showing paths into it that lead to a series of experimental sculptural moments/innovations within my practice, while also keeping Safety As A Stance whole, as a complete “work.”
RP: What materials did you use for the floor-based “carpet” with ruffled edges?
KB: The powder on the floor is fine white casting plaster mixed with powder paints, and the ruffle around the edges is made of toilet paper.
RP: There are also found-object elements incorporated into the floor piece. What are some of your favorites? Do any of them have personal significance for you?
KB: The “found” objects placed into the powder are bath bombs, blusher pearls, and soap. I love them all as little individual sculptures. They are all made of powder, just like the huge sculpture is. I get a material thrill from toiletries and makeup, which are no different than other art materials or raw materials in nature, like earth, for example. All of these materials are just different configurations of the same thing—there is no hierarchy.
RP: What do you think of the surrounding area? I hadn’t realized how special it was until I took a train from Munich to Zurich and watched it unfold. How did you get there?
KB: I arrived on the train from Zurich with my daughter, and the beauty was beyond compare. There were children jumping into lakes, and the light on the rocky mountains was just exquisite and indescribable. The turquoise clarity of the water and the pink sunsets over the stony mountains are visions I will never forget. I love that region of Austria on the Swiss border.
Karla Black’s exhibition is on view at the Kunstraum Dornbirn in Dornbirn, Austria, through November 2, 2025.
