Featuring works from the private collections of Alexander V. Petalas and Ron Nagle, the exhibition includes twenty-four of Nagle’s intimate-sized sculptures and ten drawings. The miniature, precious sculptures oscillate between craft ceramics and fine art objects. Jonathan Anderson is a fan, and one of Nagle’s works was recently exhibited at Casa Loewe on New Bond Street.
“It looked, to my eye, grotesque, then psychedelic, then uncomfortably erotic, and then all of those things at once. Slick, shiny surfaces glide over rough lunar terrain and neon gradients threaten to clash, but Nagle always buoys his mayhem with steady elegance”
– Andrew Russeth, Art News.
Drawing inspiration from artists including Josef Albers and Giorgio Morandi, Wabi-Sabi qualities of Japanese Momoyama ceramics and Californian car culture, the bijou works are presented in site-specific niches and plate-glass boxes designed in close-collaboration with the artist.
Since his first solo exhibition in 1968, Ron Nagle’s work has been the subject of regular solo museum exhibitions, including the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and the San Diego Museum of Art. His work was included in the 55th Venice Biennale’s central exhibition, The Encyclopedic Palace, curated by Massimiliano Gioni in 2013. In 2019, Nagle has presented solo exhibitions at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, Fridericianum, Kassel (2019) and Secession, Vienna (2019 – forthcoming). In 2020, Nagle will have a further solo exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum, California.
