
To inaugurate its spectacular new downtown New York flagship space at 46 Lafayette Street, near City Hall, Jack Shainman Gallery is presenting recent works by Chicago-based artist Nick Cave. On view in Nick Cave: Amalgams and Graphts are several monumental bronzes and eight vibrant large-scale assemblage pieces embellished with tole flowers; antique serving trays; and colorful needlepoint imagery, including a self-portrait. Two mural-scale Wallworks in vinyl, created with Cave’s longtime collaborator and life-partner, designer Bob Faust, attempt to create an all-immersive Nick Cave environment with their abundant floral and vegetal imagery. The new Lower Manhattan space joins the gallery’s existing venues: two in Chelsea and The School in Kinderhook, New York.

and needlepoint on wood panel. Photo courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery.
Visually striking and aesthetically ambitious, Cave’s new works represent important additions to his already audacious oeuvre. They also constitute a dramatic departure from his best-known works, such as the Soundsuits—elaborate and edgy, ostensibly wearable art Cave created in response to the brutal beating of Rodney King by L.A. police in 1991. As the venue’s inaugural show, Cave’s efforts are obliged to compete with their setting: a historic, awe-inspiring 20,000-square-foot space in the 1898 Beaux-Arts bank hall of the Clock Tower Building, designed by the architecture firm McKim, Mead & White. Initially the headquarters of the New York Life Insurance Company, the building later housed The Clocktower Gallery, directed by Alanna Heiss, throughout the 1970s and ’80s. The City of New York then acquired the thirteen-story building, granting it landmark status in 1987. When the city decided to sell the building to developers in 2013, The Clocktower Gallery closed. Architectural preservationists, however, successfully blocked proposals to gut the building and convert it into luxury apartments.

After Jack Shainman Gallery acquired the space in 2022 for $18.2 million, the building underwent a three-year renovation project organized by Jack Shainman and his partner, artist Carlos Vega. Now restored to a jewel-like art showcase, the building retains many of its original features, including grand staircases, twenty-nine-foot ceilings, Corinthian columns, marble-clad walls, and gilt decorative details throughout. Cave’s ornate wall reliefs, the Grapht series, correspond gracefully with this sumptuous space. Beneath their layers of encrusted flowers and decorative elements lies biting social commentary—the antique serving trays, for instance, remind viewers of Black servitude in bygone eras.

The imposing bronze sculptures, however, with their dark patinas, seem strangely out of place in the rarefied atmosphere. Installed on one side of the main gallery space, Amalgam (Origin), 2024, Cave’s largest sculpture to date, soars nearly twenty-six feet high. The towering figure incorporates casts of the artist’s own body parts and features. In place of a head, an intricate conglomeration of branches, stems, roosting birds and flowers dramatically rises from the figure’s neck toward the ceiling. Unfortunately, these details—already difficult to see due to the ceiling backlighting in the cavernous room—can be more closely observed from the upper-level balconies, areas used for offices, and thus off-limits to gallery visitors. Oddly cramped in the huge space, the sculpture begs to be seen outdoors. In fact, the first casting of the sculpture (all the bronzes are in editions of eight, with two artist’s proofs), has been acquired by the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. An optimum outdoor setting for the anthropomorphic tree-like construction, Amalgam (Origin) will certainly be more at home in nature than in a Lower Manhattan Beaux-Arts bank hall.
Nick Cave: Amalgams and Graphts at Jack Shainman Gallery, 46 Lafayette Street, New York from January 10 to March 15, 2025.
Thanks, David. I sure would like to see this–sounds like a bit of a battle between the Age of Innocence and the Era of Woke.