Nicole Klagsbrun

Nicole Klagsbrun grew up in Antwerp, the eldest daughter in a multilingual family. French and Flemish were the languages of the street in Belgium, while in her home, Yiddish was for secrets shared among an older generation, and German and Spanish made fleeting appearances, reminders of a Viennese past or a wartime sojourn in Cuba. These many languages helped her become comfortable with the idea that something could have meaning, even if at first she didn’t quite understand it. And that ability to withstand–or even to be intrigued by–a certain level of discomfort came in handy when in the early 1980s she landed in New York and set up shop as a gallerist amid a flourishing downtown art scene. The thirty-seven artworks included in this exhibition are drawn from both the gallery’s inventory and Klagsbrun’s personal collection. It’s her third such exhibition. The works chosen here bear witness to her eclectic eye and boundless curiosity for the new in art, while also highlighting her continuing fascination with artists who use letters and language as signs of or portals to alternative realities. Some are early works by artists shown at Cable Gallery when they were just starting out, such as the drawing by the late Ashley Bickerton, for example. Quite a few of those artists moved on to big art world careers with larger galleries. There are works by feminist iconoclasts, such as the late (and long-neglected) Dorothy Iannone, with her erotic reimagining of the Statue of Liberty as a dominatrix/WonderWoman, its inclusion here a sly reference to the gallerist as emigré. The contemporary heirs to Belgium’s most famous Surrealist, Magritte, are also represented: see Walter Swennen’s 1991 watercolor, “For Nicole,” with a bit of Flemish spelled backwards. And the time-based work of a younger generation is also present. Witness Georgica Pettus’ Screenplay (2023), a five-minute, computer-to-computer conversation. A collection is in many ways a self-fashioning. In the chatter that emanates from these text-based works–diagrams, instructions, notations, supplications, invectives, epigrams, and elegies–one may hear the echo of the gallerist’s decades of conversations with and about artists and art. - Leslie Camhi

David Deutsch Untitled, 1980 charcoal on paper mounted on board 48 1/2 x 94 inches Renee Green Uses of Mathematics and Landscape, 1989 mixed media, four panels, one shelf, one necroscopic case installed: 77 x 63.5 inches Nari Ward Fourteen Burnt Bats with Ironed Cotton (2 Weeks), 1993 ironed sterilized cotton, and burnt wooden bats installed: 34 x 10.25 x 142 inches

Nicole Klagsbrun is pleased to present an exhibition in collaboration with Julie Saul drawn from Klagsbrun’s collection. The show celebrates a decades-long friendship between Saul and Klagsbrun and features a diverse selection of photographic works spanning more than thirty five years by a wide range of artists.

The artists in this exhibition together share a clear set of existential interests in the human figure, ambiguity, and visual play.