Arny Nadler

Arny Nadler

www.arnynadler.com

Artist Statement:

Arny Nadler works in clay strategically for its mutability and plasticity. Many of his sculptures are formed by grafting individual parts together in a manner that nods at structural order but disregards anatomical and proportional correctness. Irregular outgrowths in the material signal erratic germination or atrophy—a misfiguration of appendages. Limbs that don’t appear to work oftentimes take on pronounced roles in the visual hierarchy he assembles. The resulting forms are often simultaneously heroic and absurd—they acknowledge the limitations of the body and flout conventional response systems. Where traditional figurative sculpture often captures a predictable motion in time and space, Nadler’s work changes as the viewer moves around it. What happens on one side might be wholly unanticipated on the other. By working against symmetry, he defies the expectations of wholeness for the body. Their stilled and puzzled nature is a grasping for truth or a viable system to make things whole.

Arny Nadler 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. He earned a BFA from Washington University and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has received a George Sugarman Foundation grant, a Regional Arts Commission Fellowship and two Faculty Creative Research Grants. Nadler has works in the permanent collection of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art and has exhibited at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, The Clay Center of New Orleans, Newport Beach Civic Center, Evanston Art Center, Turchin Art Center, Sculpture Key West, Western Michigan University, the Catherine Konner Sculpture Park, and the Mitchell Museum, with reviews in Art in America and other publications. He moderated the panel Material Poetics at the 2017 International Sculpture Conference in 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 in St. Louis.