New sculptures and installations that critically examine the formal, social, and linguistic roles of live models.
Over the past three decades, Iranian-born, German-based artist Nairy Baghramian (born 1971) has created sculptures and installations that upend expected modes of presentation and challenge the architectural, social, political, and historical contexts that inform them.
The new works featured in this publication explore the provisional body as the site of trauma--drawing inspiration from the tradition of the "modèle vivant," the French term for a live model in an art class. In her "ambivalently abstract" works, the artist takes unconventional approaches to materials associated with sculptural traditions of casting, including aluminum, lead, steel and wax. In conversation with sculptures from the Nasher's permanent collection by Louise Bourgeois, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and others, Baghramian's works offer new ways to think about representations of bodies and the unseen labor of models, as well as the linguistic play afforded by different meanings of the word "model" and its linguistic relatives, such as "modulate" and "modify."
This book offers a richly illustrated and wide-ranging consideration of this powerful new body of work's initial presentation at the Nasher through vivid and extensive installation photographs and essays by the exhibition's curator, Catherine Craft, artist Julie Mehretu, scholar Kate Nesin, and curator Paulina Pobocha. Together, they offer insights into the role of personal history, sculptural tradition, the play of language, and other artists' considerations of the fragmented and broken body in the broader scope of Baghramian's practice.
Details
12 x 9 x 1 in. | 166 pages
Hardcover | Acrylic clear jacket
ISBN: 9781636811239
Nasher Sculpture Center, 2024
