DALLAS, TX.- Scottish artist Karla Black created two sculptures specifically for the Dallas Museum of Art to exhibit in her first solo project at a U.S. museum. Karla Black: Concentrations 55, on view from October 19, 2012, through March 17, 2013, is part of the Concentrations series of project-based solo exhibitions by international emerging artists. The series began in 1981 as part of the DMA’s commitment to the work of living artists, with the goal of making the work of contemporary artists accessible to DMA audiences while preserving the excitement of the work.

“We are pleased to have Karla Black participate in our long-standing Concentrations series and to serve as the first U.S. museum to present a solo project by the Scottish artist,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, The Eugene McDermott Director of the DMA.

The two large works are on view in the Museum’s Hoffman Galleries and South Concourse. Necessity is a delicate, complex scrim that extends before the window wall facing the outdoor sculpture garden. Exactly That, which fills the entrance to the Hoffman Galleries, is an imposing assemblage of ephemeral materials that claims the architecture of the gallery as one of its elements. Both works embrace the expansive range of materials and complicated structural experiences that Black has engaged to structure her work since the mid- to late 2000s.

“Black’s sculpture represents not only a formal engagement with the physical properties of material and the metaphysics of space but also a literal encounter between the artist and those materials,” said Jeffrey Grove, The Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the DMA. “It is through her unique choice of materials, and utterly individualistic deployment of them, that Black has quickly distinguished herself as an original voice among the crowded field of contemporary sculptors.”

Karla Black currently resides in Scotland, where she was born and later attended the Glasgow School of Art. In recent years, Black has riveted attention for her compelling work. In 2011 she was selected to represent Scotland at the Venice Biennale, an international exhibition of contemporary art held in Venice, Italy. Later that same year, Black was a finalist for Britain’s Turner Prize, awarded annually to one British visual artist under the age of fifty. Black’s decisive ability to invigorate and upend a rote language of sculpture is distinguished by her fearless challenge to the limitations of traditional form and her idiosyncratic capacity to exploit the physical properties of her chosen materials.