Krista Clark: Base Line of Appraisal

In Base Line of Appraisal, Krista Clark’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, the artist interrogates the built environment by incorporating new and repurposed materials into sculptural structures that mimic familiar processes of construction to present them in unfamiliar, and at times, uncomfortable ways.

Wide, flat concrete foundations support tall rectangular wooden frames and other varied materials typical in conventional wood-frame construction. Some frames are enclosed in green sheets of drywall, but the majority remain bare. The open frames allow for the structures to engage in visual conversation from several viewpoints without one obscuring the others. Harsh industrial lights embedded in the structures create angular shadows along a gallery wall. A floor fan whirs, stirring the movement of a large blue tarp draped from the back wall to the side of one of the wooden frames. A bag of concrete rests across the base of one frame, weighing it down. Sheets of unused drywall and double-hung windows rest delicately against stable surfaces, giving the gallery an air of anticipation. It’s as if a construction site was evacuated, all the workers gone to lunch or home for the night.

It is in this moment of anticipation that viewers must contend with Clark’s work. The tension lies in the material’s endless potential. The aesthetics of a construction site are used to signify to viewers the processes of development, which can evoke both imagination and anxiety by bringing to the forefront the viewers’ perception of what is under construction and what is complete. Each material—concrete, glass, wood, insulation—has an understood utility and purpose that complicates the perception of these forms as art. The implication is that the amalgamation of materials might ultimately be assembled into a complete and familiar structure—that all of these readily available materials will fulfill their purpose and be actualized from frame to wall, from bag of concrete to foundation. Clark is intentionally making space for assumption by creating works that exist in a state between raw material and realized construction. The stacked, layered, and leaning structures aren’t indicative of any particular type of building and offer no easy presumptions.

Clark manipulates space and dimension brilliantly. The white box gallery becomes an immersive abstract three-dimensional image. Her structural forms are accessible from all sides and can be viewed from several vantage points. The wood frames, billowing tarp, windows, and drywall create a conversation in the language of form, line, and color within the gallery, one that includes the body of the viewer. Supplemented by light, sound, and airflow, construction becomes experiential composition. Every angle becomes a point of interrogation. Clark leaves few places for the eye to fully rest, apart from several assemblages hung along one wall. Their drywall substrates collapse the space created in the open gallery into almost two-dimensional forms. Although using many of the same materials, the construction aesthetics are less visible enhancing the abstract and tactile elements of the work. The multidimensional way the artist presents the work reveals her interest in manipulating and regulating interactions with space.

There is vulnerability in how the work unabashedly reveals the innards of our constructed world. Wooden frames can symbolize strength as well as exposed fragility. These seemingly incomplete structures, left unrefined and possibly abandoned, evoke feelings of danger, fear, and unfulfillment. Once immersed in the abstracted space, the body is placed in conversation with these forms, revealing how it also exists in a perpetual state of development. Clark puts the power in the hands of the viewers by providing for them raw material and an immersive landscape to investigate. However, the perception of these works as developing or incomplete is just that. Krista Clark’s Base Line of Appraisal asks, is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?

TK Smith is a writer, researcher, and aspiring curator of American art. Currently, he is a Tina Dunkley Curatorial Fellow in American Art with the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum. His interests lie in the intersections of art, material, and race.