PROJECT
FEATURE ARTICLE
CARLA TAK
The Mulholland Series
– ABOUT THE PROJECT
Like an oversized Mark Rothko, Carla Tak’s king size abstract canvases in her seminal Mulholland series are queerly compelling as much as a full-body experience. There is a lot at play in these amazing pieces. The series title is an allusion to Mulholland Drive, a branch road leading out of LA and into Laurel Canyon, the now legendary creative hub where a motley collection of musician and artists – Bob Dylan, Joni MItchell, Frank Zappa -set their creativity free and soaring. Tak’s work in Mulholland is just as wildly adventurous and ambitiously profound. It’s always a treat to talk with Carla about the meaning and emotion she infuses into her work.
“As large as a letter on the Hollywood sign, each work is a fascinating journey marked by freedom and emotion and all the wondrous elements that symbolize Tak’s spirited history. They tell a story of self-discovery, survival and reinvention on a grand scale.”
– Barry Dumka
EXCERPT
CARLA TAK
The Mulholland Series
“Yesterday a child came out to wonder”
– Joni Mitchell, The Circle Game, 1966
Mulholland Drive rambles its way from congested LA to the creatively fertile community that bloomed in Laurel Canyon starting in the mid 60s. The early experimental sound of that era was first played in the now legendary living rooms and local pubs around the canyon. Joni Mitchell had rented a house there and Dylan and a bohemian crowd would drive out to be part of the scene. Laurel Canyon was the place to break free of expectations and create something brilliantly new and Mulholland was how you got there. It’s always been a road for dreamers.
In Carla Tak’s monumental Mullholland series, the large-format works thunder and roll with great bursts of colour and sensory pleasures. The works appear to be visual explosions but there is purpose and clarity amid the chaos. As each piece comes together over months, Tak puzzles out the canvas, relying on subconscious motivations and emotional presence to guide her choices. The work is sculptural as much as painterly as Tak constructs many of the iconographic elements from her extensive collection of saved paint pieces, the remnants of old pots and palettes and drip paintings. In their childlike primitive style and tactile expressiveness, the pieces evoke Basquiat, de Kooning and late career Jean Dubuffet, artists that sought to break free of conventional structures to reveal something more vital in art.
— (end of excerpt)
© Barry Dumka/BCREATIVE CONSULTING
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