Kara Walker "Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart" > 1994 Cut paper on wall.

Courtesy photo "A Work on Progress," by Kara Walker, is cut paper on a wall.

Kara Walker's main artistic tool is not a brush, pencil or even a chisel.

It's an X-Acto knife.

In her studio, she wields a sharp blade with calm deftness, slicing black construction paper into the silhouettes that make up the bulk of her most notable work — and cut straight to the heart and soul of her take on the black experience.

The images, although elegant and meticulous, are frequently shocking and painful to view. And although she would prefer not to explain their often complex meanings, many messages in Walker's retrospective, "My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love," on display at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, are as clear as the black-and-white world in which the artist metaphorically lives.

Not quite 40, Walker is young to be the recipient of a major retrospective, but she has garnered much attention since 1994, soon after she received a master's degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Walker gravitated toward silhouettes in school because she discovered that they were an ideal way to encompass elements of the stories she wants to tell. Race is suggested by the contrast of the black paper on white walls. The sense of time can be conveyed through an art form that peaked in popularity well more than a century ago.

Also, the lack of facial features adds anonymity, while allowing easier access to iconography in realms such as slavery and Southern aristocracy.

The opening room of this carefully designed show sets the tone for what's to come.

The first work is a text piece, "Letter from a Black Girl," a missive that consumes an entire wall. Its greeting is angry and deriding — punctuated by a well-placed curse word — followed by a tirade that eviscerates the subject, which could be a slave owner, although the subtitles suggest that there is more than one target of the rage.

Juxtaposed with "Letter" is a 50-foot diorama, Walker's first work of this scale. One of many saddled with a lengthy title, "Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart" is a blending of familiar imagery that one might compare to "Gone with the Wind" and the pro-slavery world of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation." Walker's vision, however, is filled with graphic sexuality and violence, and what many would consider perversity.

It's the contradiction in Walker's art — the beauty and grace of silhouette colliding with messy, angry, oppressive subject matter — that probably made her a quick hit with museums in America and Europe.

But not everyone was pleased, which is clear from Walker devoting an entire gallery to art that appears inspired by the wealth of criticism that she has received, much of it from African-American artists, for presenting African-American stereotypes.

Undaunted, Walker continues presenting her visions about the past and how America's collective history is reshaped by the present.

The silhouettes are the main component of the retrospective, and the most impressive is a nearly 100-foot cyclorama with a 51-word title. It encircles and dominates the viewer with the nightmare of slavery and its legacy.

Not restricting herself to one genre, Walker also uses cutout images projected onto the walls. The shadowy figures and use of swirls of color darken the tone immensely.

Films give action to the stick-puppet characters, adding to Walker's narratives. Most of these, again, are explicit in nature and thoroughly memorable.

Walker's work likely will warrant another retrospective in a decade or two, as her style will probably change, and her desire to work primarily in silhouette may diminish.

Already, though, Walker has staked a strong claim as one of America's most powerful artists working today.

— E-mail freelance columnist Jeff Favre at jjfavre@yahoo.com