Ron Nagle: Necessary Obstacles
Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
September 11 – October 23, 2021
The exhibition Ron Nagle: Necessary Obstacles at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York features eighteen new sculptures and six related drawings. Each sculpture is meticulously crafted by hand in the artist’s San Francisco studio in a variety of materials including clay, catalyzed polyurethane, epoxy resin, and wood. Despite their intimate scale, Ron Nagle’s works have an outsized visual presence. Evoking otherworldly landscapes or surreal architectural arrangements, Ron Nagle’s diminutive sculptures are “invested with the grandeur of the Taj Mahal” as the critic Dave Hickey has written. With their unexpected combinations and forms, Ron Nagle’s inventive works elicit a vast range of associations. “The thing you want people to feel,” Ron Nagle has said, “is something they haven’t felt before.”
RON NAGLE (b. 1939) began working with ceramics in the 1950s, while still in high school. His first oneperson exhibition took place in 1968, and since then his work has been shown at numerous museums around the world, including most recently “Ron Nagle: Handsome Drifter” at the Berkeley Art Museum, as well as one-person exhibitions at the Vienna Secession, the Fridericianum in Kassel, and the Perimeter in London.
MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY
523 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
_________________
