Julie Ann Nagle
New York, NY
Residency: August-September 2013
Project Description
As a resident at Sculpture Space in August and September, 2013, I took advantage of the huge studio to make an installation comprised of 11 parts. My studio in Brooklyn is too small to work on many pieces at the same time, so it was an extraordinary opportunity to work in this way. I was able to work on the series of sculptures as a whole, balancing the parts over time. Now I can take them back to my studio in Brooklyn and refine them individually over the next few months.
The sculptures represent 3 time periods: the paleolithic age, early 20th century Modernism, and the present. Some of them are replicas, some are revisions, and others are contemporary forms of portraiture. The series began with three replicas of Cycladic figures in collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I increased the scale from 6 inches to life size (about 5'6"). There are two modified versions of works by Brancusi, and portraiture made from pop culture objects.
About the Artist
Julie Ann Nagle received her BFA from the Cooper Union and completed her MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2009. She has completed residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the MFAH Core Program, Sculpture Space, Franconia Sculpture Park, the MacDowell Colony, and Seven Below. In 2011 she participated as an AirSpace Resident at Abrons Art Center and currently lives and works in New York.
Nagle’s work explores the performative nature of objects and the monumentalization of individuals. She composes installations akin to three dimensional paintings, considering common methods of display in contemporary sculpture and 18th century still life painting and photography. Representational and graphic elements within these spaces introduce illusion and perceptual shifts in depth.
Nagle stages anachronistic fictions in which facets of historical unconscious are explored using contemporary material forms. Below the surface of these fictions are actual histories of innovation, exploration, and ambition which are trace with wry humor, comparing their promises of social and scientific utopias against the present.