Karla Kaplun

La Misión

...And then was the Word of God

Boiling from these hands;

Coffins wide open

—Dropping off feast, fright—,

Eternally committed to

Felony.

Gods as guts and Goals

Hunted by the law of the Great Number;

Innocent cruelty dispossessed from

Joker, Pythia, Messiah in the name of

Kratos.

Law nor number:

Mystery!

Night in eye. Homer’s watery humor covered in waterfalls;

Ocular obsolescence shows the face of sigh(t).

Potential encounters where answer is perpetually

Question.

Ruins nourished by the ones to be killed—Beauties worthy of

Sacrifice.

Time is the flagellum of presence.

Utilitarianism: chimera that ignores our ash destiny. We are

Vehicles seeking a different return of the same

World.

X spins 45°. Three nailed sticks...

Yawn of years goes by—new?

Zero.

—KK

Gaga is pleased to present La Misión, the second exhibition of Karla Kaplun (b. Querétaro, México, 1995) with Gaga and her first in the United States, marking the opening of our new shared space in Los Angeles.

The show consists of an altarpiece (retablo in Spanish) composed of 15 paintings the artist began in 2020. The starting point was the idea of the Ark, the Plague, God's wrath and the need to evacuate our contemporary world: And God told Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” (Genesis 6:13) As it goes, God then told Noah to build an Ark divided into three levels which we see represented in the installation. The work depicts images of various animals, the figure of Christ, and members of the artist’s immediate community suspended in a baroque tableaux chronicling the birth of a new world, the death of an old one, and all its attendant violence. The title of the exhibition evokes the concept of a task or duty–a mission or a commission. What does it mean to produce a work, to be filled with purpose, to act on One’s will, or the will of God?