Mondegreens and New Understandings
Reza Aramesh, Nicola Samorì, Hugo Wilson
Nicodim Gallery, New York
September 2 – October 4, 2025
In death, in tragedy, in grief, in heartbreak, one’s recollections of the Before Times are often rose-tinted. Hindsight is not always 20-20; the moments before a fall are remembered with a false clarity, a nostalgia for the era prior to the Bad Thing that brought us to our current moment of despair. After the initial shock of the passing of a parent, the planes hitting, the papers being served, memory softens the years before whatever allegorical or literal bomb dropped. We subsequently highlight and reconfigure the way things were into an architecture that befits the narrative we wish to convey, like a eulogy strung together from slightly—sometimes severely—misremembered song lyrics.Mondegreens and New Understandings is an exhibition of Starbucks lovers wrapped up like a douche while Tony Danza holds us closer in the bond that will bring us together.Reza Aramesh, Nicola Samorì, and Hugo Wilson’s respective practices build monuments to the act of tailoring recollections and reminiscences to suit one’s sense of self, in addition to personal and empiric legacies still being written and reconsidered.With Bactrian II, Wilson reappropriates a baseline symbol of Britain’s Orientalist duplicity with a rendering of a shaggy camel moulting its wool in a manner that recalls 18th century jewels of the crown like George Stubbs and John Wootten. The Bactrian breed is famously domesticated, but Wilson’s muse is flamboyant, unbridled, and sure-footed as he proudly trots through a greenish negative space that smirks of English school pretense. The camel is isolated, imperfections magnified—no gods, no masters. He’s almost winking at us, asking (and borrowing a mondegreen from Nigel Tufnel), “what’s wrong with being sexy?”Aramesh’s Action 211, Site of the Fall: Study of the Renaissance Garden, At 12 noon, Monday 15 July 1968 presents a striking male figure carved in marble, either bound and stripped to be tortured, or slowly disrobing in anticipation of carnal fireworks. The work’s title is evasive in its specificity, the artist gives us an event, place, time, and date, inviting the viewer to speculate on the nature of the scene. Is this David in Calvin Klein preparing for la petite mort or the grand one? The artist’s staging of the human body challenges the viewer with questions of vulnerability and agency, but he alone knows the words to his song.Samorì’s untitled oil-on-wood-with-copper-leaf piece features a man raising his arms above his head and craning his neck toward the heavens. The brushwork, palette, and subject are reminiscent of Caravaggio or Mario Minniti, but the medium itself is poetically deformed by Samorìs hand—he has peeled the figures arms off, exposing reflective copper leaf on its underside, the hanging “flesh” obscuring the subject’s face and torso. His positioning evokes both the ecstasy of a spiritual awakening and the agony of his dismemberment. If the medium is massaged back to wholeness, will the bodies contained within truly be restored?In dialogue with one another, Aramesh, Samorì, and Wilson forge new pathways in the way we understand and interpret art history inside our present bubble. There are no fixed positions within the wonky salon of Mondegreens and New Understandings, but rather three unique practices which actively engage and manipulate the ever-evolving subjectivity of observing, reinterpreting, and misremembering the world through art and art in the world.— Ben Lee Ritchie Handler
REZA ARAMESH (b. Iran) lives and works between London and New York. He received an MA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths University, London, in 1997. Aramesh reimagines scenes of global conflict through sculptural reenactments, stripping them of overt signs of war, violence, and historical context. The resulting works are caught between beauty and brutality, and question the representation of the male body in relation to race, class, and sexuality. Exhibitions include Mondegreens and New Understandings: Reza Aramesh, Nicola Samorì, Hugo Wilson, Nicodim, New York (2025, forthcoming); Fragment of the Self, Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2025, solo); Foreigners Everywhere, 60th Venice Biennale, Venice (2024); Asia Society Triennial: We Do Not Dream Alone, Asia Society Museum, New York (2021); 12 noon, Monday 5 August, Asia Society Museum, New York (2019, solo); Action 180, Leila Heller Gallery, New York (2019, solo); Like Life: Sculpture, Color and the Body (1300–Now), The Met Breuer, New York (2018); Sculpture in the City, London (2021); Frieze Sculpture Park, London (2017); Art Basel Parcours, Basel (2017); At 11:57 am Wednesday 23 October 2013, Ab-Anbar Gallery, Tehran (2016, solo); and The Great Game, 56th Venice Biennale, Iran Pavilion, Venice (2015). His works have been staged in performative contexts at institutions such as the Barbican Centre, Tate Britain, and ICA, London. Aramesh’s practice is held in numerous public and private collections worldwide, including the Tate, UK; MOCAK, Poland; Rodin Museum; Versaille Palace Collection; Hugo Voeten Foundation; and the Zabludowicz Collection.
NICOLA SAMORI (b. 1977, Forlì, Italy) lives and works in Bagnacavallo, Italy. His work was included as a part of the Italian Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Exhibitions include Mondegreens and New Understandings: Reza Aramesh, Nicola Samorì, Hugo Wilson, Nicodim, New York (2025, forthcoming); La bocca di Berlino, Galerie EIGEN+ART, Berlin (2025, solo); The Ballad of the Children of the Czar, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2024); KAFKAesque, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague (2024); Blend the Blind, Nicodim, New York (2024, solo); DISEMBODIED, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024); Luce e sangue, Duomo di Napoli, Neapel (2023, solo); Luce e sangue, Chiesa di Santa Lucia alla Badia, Syrakus (2023, solo); Medea, Antico Mercato, Syracuse (2023); Joshua Hagler, Devin B. Johnson, Nicola Samorì, Hugo Wilson, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2023); DISEMBODIED, Nicodim, New York (2023); Le Ossa della Madre, Villa d’Este, Tivoli (2022, solo); On the Wall, Building Gallery, Milan (2022); MONO, Galerie EIGEN+ART, Lipsia (2022, solo); Sfregi, Palazzo Fava, Bologna (2021, solo); ROMA (Manuale della mollezza e la tecnica dell’eclisse), Monitor Gallery, Rome (2021, solo); Danae Revisited, Fondazione Francesco Fabbri, Pieve di Soligo (2021); 141 – Un secolo di disegno in Italia, Fondazione del Monte, Bologna (2021); Black Square, Fondazione Made in Cloister e Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples (2020, solo); In abisso, Galerie EIGEN + ART, Berlin (2020, solo); Lucìe, MART- Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto (2020, solo); Stand 1D08, Galerie EIGEN + ART, Berlin (2020); Collective Care: A House with Many Guests, M WOODS, Chaoyang, Beijing (2020); Cannibal Trail, Yu-Hsiu Museum of Art, Caotun (2019, solo); Solstizio d’Inferno, Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna (2019, solo); Metafysica, Haugar Vestfold Kunstmuseum, Tønsberg (2019); Preparing for Darkness – Vol. 3: I’m Not There, Kühlhaus, Berlin (2019); Iscariotes: Matteo Fato/Nicola Samorì, Casa Testori, Milan (2018, solo); Malafonte, Galerie EIGEN + ART, Berlin (2018, solo); BILD MACHT RELIGION: Kunst zwischen Verehrung, Verbot und Vernichtung, Kunstmuseum, Bochum (2018); Begotten, Not Made, Ana Cristea Gallery, New York (2014, solo); The Venerable Abject, Ana Cristea Gallery, New York (2012).
HUGO WILSON (b. 1982, United Kingdom) lives and works in London. His work has been exhibited at the The National Museum, Stockholm, Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Wilson is collected by the New York Public Library, the Deutsche Bank Collection, the Janet de Botton Collection, the United States Library of Congress and many others. Exhibitions include Mondegreens and New Understandings: Reza Aramesh, Nicola Samorì, Hugo Wilson, Nicodim, New York (2025, forthcoming); The Raft, Galerie Judin, Berlin (2024, solo); SIRANI, Galerie Judin, Berlin (2023); Whatever Gets You Thru the Night, Nicodim, New York (2023, solo); Joshua Hagler, Devin B. Johnson, Nicola Samorì, Hugo Wilson, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2023); Carnal Agreement, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2022, solo); Hollow Moon, Nicodim, New York (2021); Hugo Wilson, Parafin, London (2020, solo); Coincidental Truths, Galerie Judin, Berlin (2020, solo); When You Waked Up the Buffalo, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2020); Iconic Works, The National Museum, Stockholm (2020); Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Museum, Helsinki (2020); Crucible, Galerie Isa, Mumbai (2019, solo); Skin Stealers, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2019); Hugo Wilson, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2018, solo); Dialogues / New Paintings from London, GASK, Kutná Hora Museum, Czech Republic (2018); Frieze Sculpture Park, Regent’s Park, London (2018).
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