Black is one of those artists whose career depends more on others not making work than her making some herself. Her activism, likewise, hinges on denial. She could, therefore, be a fitting prophet of the oncoming cultural apocalypse. She has, alas, often preferred to be among its horsemen.
This meagre exhibition, comprising half a dozen lightweight text roundels, is more rant than Revelation. The paintings spell nonsense phrases – “very oxyn in dyed tulle also shall…”, “even yearners to riot…” – corrupted from the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, the rights regime is crumbling (even the exhibition’s title anagrammatically turns “human rights” into a joke), and Black wishes to reanimate it by painting in references to past revolutions and astral futures.
But one would guess none of it from the paint, and Black cannot have thought of her role in the collapse for more than a moment. Her blink-and-so-what aesthetic is unequal to the task; it outright embarrasses the gravity of her subject. These works’ greatest value, then, is to confirm that their intellectual primacy is truly over. What’s wrong with rights makes no right with painting.
