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    Nicole Wermers: Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work…

    September 12-November 2, 2024

    Jessica Silverman is pleased to announce Nicole Wermers’ “Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work…,” an exhibition of new sculptures, on view September 12 to November 2, 2024, on the gallery’s second floor. Featuring five maquette-sized sculptures, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery monumentalizes the reclining female as an active agent worthy of elevation. Known for investigating urban space and the invisible forces that mediate (women’s) bodies, “Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work…” peers into the generative power of leisure, and invites us to unwind.

    Demystifying and exposing immaterial labor has long been central to Wermers’ conceptual framework. In this new exhibition, she considers art historical depictions of the reclining female nude to refute their pervasive erasure of agency. Each of her sculptures comprises hand-formed clay figurines atop stacks of packaging from household products and VHS tapes. In Proposal for a Monument to a Reclining Female #13 (2023), a recumbent woman with arms outstretched behind her head lies on an empty Reese’s Puffs cereal box. Her relaxed pose is echoed in linguistic allusions to leisure and power on the highly refined Reese’s Puffs package design.
    The horizontal composition of Proposal for a Monument to a Reclining Female #17 (2024) playfully reclaims the marble base’s role in Greek and Roman sculpture, or a male-dominated view of history. Wermers’ clay figure is perched on a white and gray marble-patterned Kleenex box and empty containers of sedatives and stimulants, repurposed into a kind of ottoman. Presented as maquette-sized proposals for monuments rather than as monuments in their own right, each artwork elevates their traditionally objectified subject into a figure ready to destabilize a rigidly vertical cultural heritage. Wermers upholds and celebrates this resting body, active in her own autonomous contours.
    The title of the show is a line taken from Rihanna’s 2016 song Work. The melodic repetition of the word in the iconic pop song expresses the complex relationships between labor and leisure, the main theme of this exhibition. It is also a simplified list of the six works in the show, which contains the first typeface designed by the artist: Recliner (Bold). Seen in the title graphics, each letter in Recliner (Bold) leans backwards–sometimes on its neighbor–inverting the traditional purpose of italics and instead depicting the forms in a relaxed state. It also speaks to the invisible labor performed by fonts and typefaces to subtly influence consumer choice through their design.

    Nicole Wermers (b. 1971, Emsdetten, Germany) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Hamburg and received an MFA from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. She is the 2024 recipient of the Helmut Kraft Foundation Prize for Fine Arts and has previously been awarded the Rome Prize of the German Academy Villa Massimo, Rome. In 2015, Wermers was nominated for the Turner Prize. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions and comissions at Tate Britain, London; Aspen Art Museum, CO; The Common Guild, Glasgow; Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland; Kunstverein Hamburg; Germany; Villa Massimo German Academy, Rome; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Camden Arts Centre, London; and Secession, Vienna, among others. In 2025, she will enjoy a solo exhibition at St Carthage Hall/ Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland. Her work is in the permanent collections of Tate, London; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt; Orange County Museum of Art, CA; Kunsthalle Hamburg; Stiftung Kunsthalle, Bern; Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Bundeskunstsammlung, Berlin, Government Art Collection, London; and the British Council Collection, London among others. Her public sculpture Emscher Folly is permanently installed as part of the Emscher Kunstweg (Emscher River Art Trail), Dusiburg, Germany. Since 2017 she has been professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Wermers lives and works in London and is represented by Jessica Silverman, San Francisco; Herald St, London; Tanya Bonakdar, New York and Los Angeles; and Produzentengalerie Hamburg.