MARCH 2 – APRIL 21
Organized by artist, Arny Nadler
Galusha Gallery
Virtual tour available online March 8
Firstlings was an ongoing investigation of ceramic sculptures and ink wash drawings that sought to address the predicament of the human form’s fragility and endless struggle to adapt to life’s ever-changing circumstances. Terry Suhre writes, in his catalogue essay for the first iteration of this exhibition at Bruno David Gallery in 2020, “The ‘predicament’ Nadler refers to in statements on his work is the uneasy, existential awareness of an unsympathetic, and likely hostile, existence that is not predisposed to human wants or needs. A reality that continually tests the body’s (and the spirit’s) limitations, revealing its susceptibility to everyday suffering and humiliation.”
About the Artist
Arny Nadler is the son of an immigrant tool and die maker who was permanently paralyzed in a factory accident. “I grew up preoccupied with the notion of wholeness—of body and place. Making sculpture has always been my way of understanding the world. I was trained at a very young age to look carefully at how things work, to steal with my eyes (as my father put it) while poring over the shops and drafting tables of his industrial practice. As I developed as an artist, the scope of these observations extended beyond tools and machines to the intricacies of living form. My sculptures and works on paper investigate the body in a state of ambiguous metamorphosis, struggling to adapt to challenges and hostilities that originate within the body and from an unpredictable and evolving environment. What, specifically, they are becoming is not very important—that they are on their way toward an unknown conclusion is. Some of the figures are grotesque, some are alluring, and some are both. Drawing on human and animal bodies, these almost otherworldly figures precariously gesture, as if even they don’t know what they truly are.”
Nadler earned a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis (MO) and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI). He is a recipient of a George Sugarman Foundation grant, a Regional Arts Commission’s Artist Fellowship (St. Louis, MO), and two Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts Faculty Creative Research grants (St. Louis, MO). Nadler has works in the permanent collection of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art (Sedalia, MO) and was included in the 24th No Dead Artists exhibition at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery (New Orleans). Nadler was in a two-person exhibition with Ivan Albreht at Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati, OH) and was included in This Moment of Rupture, a national survey of contemporary ceramics at VisArts (Rockville, MD). Other venues include the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (Santa Ana, CA), City of Newport Beach Civic Center (CA), and the Catherine Konner Sculpture Park at Rockland Center for the Arts (West Nyack, NY), with reviews in Art in America and other publications. He moderated the panel Material Poetics at the 2017 International Sculpture Center Conference (Kansas City, MO) and has presented at the Foundations in Art: Theory and Education Conference and the Mid-America College Art Association Conference. He has been a visiting artist at several universities and colleges and is represented by Bruno David Gallery (St. Louis, MO). He currently resides in St. Louis where he is an associate professor at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis where he chaired undergraduate art from 2013 – 2018.
Related Events
Artist Talk: Arny Nadler
Firstlings artist and curator, Arny Nadler, presented an artist talk where he discussed how he produced the sculptural and illustrative works that comprised the exhibition. Following the talk, guests were invited to join Nadler for an informal gallery tour of the work to fully experience Firstlings.
FREE