Ron Nagle
Chewing Gum Monuments
Until 30 August 2015
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Museumpark 18-20
NL-3015 CX Rotterdam
Netherlands
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–5pm
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen presents the first solo exhibition in the Netherlands of Californian artist Ron Nagle. In Chewing Gum Monuments, Nagle has created an installation with more than 20 new sculptures and a series of recent drawings. The works combine the perfection that comes with 40 years of experience with the immediacy of a well-composed song.
Although small in size, Nagle’s objects have a monumental presence. Since the 1970s he has worked on an idiosyncratic oeuvre that helped to propel traditional studio ceramics into the arena of fine art. He has united two seemingly irreconcilable worlds: abstraction and the traditional cup form.
Nagle uses a carefully chosen palette of paints and glazes, which are meticulously applied, often in several layers. The finish matches the transcendent beauty of 16th-century Momoyama ceramics even if the day-glo accents and matte spray paints reinforce the objects’ contemporary character. Nagle’s roots are in California’s hot-rod culture and his attraction to the “Finish Fetishism” of the West Coast art scene.
In addition to the sculptures, the museum is also exhibiting several of Nagle’s drawings. In recent years drawing has become a substantial part of his artistic practice. The direct expression afforded by drawing inspires him to explore new directions. Nagle makes the drawings in the evening, after a day of working in the ceramic studio, while watching endless reruns of his favourite Charlie Chan episodes. The iterative act induces a state of peripheral cognition in which the drawings “flow” automatically. Nagle considers these drawings flat sculptures in which the black lines of the graphite, the cloudy white paint and the gold glimmers express an instant beauty: the quality he strives for in his three-dimensional work.
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