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Nicki Cherry

@nicki__cherry

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🛠️ Making bodies in Queens
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It’s my birthday today and I want to share some more about “Desire Stages”, which is on view for a week and half more in Venice @capsuleshanghai.⁣ ⁣ I flew to Chicago yesterday morning—the last trip I will take in this current revival of my life here. Last night I walked along the lake to watch the sunset usher in my solar return. Lake Michigan has cradled me through 32 years of new love, old love; new loss, old loss. ⁣ ⁣ “Desire Stages” came out of these lake waves. The body was made in Chicago, the chair was sourced in my birth state, and the candles were made in New York. Eight hearts have burned in its chest these past few months, rotating between four scents that evoke different affects of desire.⁣ ⁣ The first is the smell of yearning—a cool dark forest with a flicker of warmth in the distance. Notes of damp wood, tree moss, pine, iris, violet, lily, and incense.⁣ ⁣ The second is a chaotic, manic desire—with notes of whiskey, musk, saffron, sweat, cherry, and sacchrine vanilla. ⁣ ⁣ The third smells like the memory of a crush’s breath lingering in the air. ⁣ ⁣ The last scent is the burning sharpness of feeling trapped in your own desire—warheads sour candy lodged in your chest. ⁣ ⁣ I hope that you spend some time this summer somewhere that cradles you.⁣ ⁣ —⁣ ⁣ Desire Stages, 2024⁣ ⁣ Fiberglass-reinforced gypsum cement, concrete pigment, pigmented wax, steel medical examination chair, cast beeswax candles with four rotating fragrances⁣ ⁣ 46” x 26” x 50” taken in Dorsoduro by @nicki__cherry
32
2 years ago
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Look at her tears, they have been poured into a leg⁣ ⁣ Ceramic stoneware, medical step stool, fiberglass reinforced gypsum cement, wax, latex tubing, fountain pump, water, oil of milk⁣ ⁣ The ceramic form in this work is a direct reference to ancient Iranian wine vessels made in the shape of human legs. The title of the work refers to a line of Persian poetry that connects these wine legs to early Christianity: “Look at Mary’s tears of blood: they have been poured into a Christian’s leg.” Tears of blood are meant to convey Mary’s deep-felt grief and anxiety. There’s a link in my bio to an article discussing these wine legs. ⁣ ⁣ I replaced wine with a milky fluid—something still bodily with connotations of care and nurturing. The translucency of the water also feels like it could be supersaturated salt water. The fluid flows out of the vessel’s articulated toes. ⁣ ⁣ The show will be open from 3-6PM tomorrow @the_border_project_space ! taken in The Border by @nicki__cherry
11
5 years ago
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Some in-studio shots of Lithophyte. Wanted to document the last sculpture made in my beloved blue-floored studio. 🦋 Moving next week. taken in Long Island City by @nicki__cherry
16
5 years ago
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announcing: the final installment of our Open Studio Series Wood, Words, Pearls, and Clay
Open Studio at @bluepomelo.studio
Artist Talk: @bluepomelo.studio @nicki__cherry @annaletson @cool_slug_ moderated by @byjoymao Saturday, 10/24 from 2-5pm
📍Gowanus, Brooklyn 
Limited space — details & RSVP at link in bio. Tickets include admission, light refreshments, and an entry into our upcoming Collection Launch Celebration Raffle 🐣 - In this final installment of our Open Studio series, join four Chores artisans working in very different mediums — for an exclusive preview of the pieces they’ve created for this year’s collection, as well as a panel discussion centered on their unique crafts and material perspectives: ​WOOD — Alison Cheng, woodworker & founder @bluepomelo.studio
WORDS — Aishvarya Arora, poet
PEARLS — Nicki Cherry, sculptor
CLAY — Anna Letson, ceramicist taken in Brooklyn, New York by @nicki__cherry
8
5 hours ago
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Some of the new tulips for my upcoming show @capsuleshanghai 🌱 New York friends, if you’re around this Saturday 9/12 from 4-8 PM, swing by my studio in LIC to take a peek at the work before it ships! DM for address. taken in Long Island City by @nicki__cherry
5
21 days ago
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Ushered in summer by pouring iron in Pittsburgh at the historic Carrie Blast Furnace @riversofsteel under a full moon. ❤️‍🔥 An amazing experience to make work in the city where my mum and her family grew up. Thank you @paigehenry6010, @edparrishjr, @macabre_metal, and the Rivers of Steel crew for helping me make all of these molds & facilitating an incredible week. ⁣ ⁣ The hearts were made via lost wax, burning out the half-melted fragments of Desire Stages’ candle hearts collected in the past two years. I could still recognize the scents from the candles through the ozonic smells of the pour. Excising the last bits of emotion to molt into something more long lasting, yet more static. I also cast parts from shower stools, requiring building the most complex (& heavy) mold I’ve ever made.⁣ ⁣ Excited to see how these cast objects transform in the studio over the next few months. taken in Rivers of Steel: Carrie Blast Furnaces by @nicki__cherry
11
4 months ago
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The tulips are just starting to peek up out of the soil after a long winter. ⁣ ⁣ These works were made by copper plating the dried blossoms and bulbs of tulips that were planted in my 2019 MFA thesis and my 2023 body of work. Tulips have been many things for me since I first started using them in 2019—symbols of anxiety, repressed desire, attempts of control over the unruly, insect molts, the potential for something beautiful to emerge out of a cold & dark process. ⁣ ⁣ I’d like to think that underneath their metal surface, some of these tulips still have enough energy stored up to bloom once more. ⁣ ⁣ Trepans, 2025⁣ ⁣ Copper plated tulip force-bloomed in previous body of work, stoneware, copper chain⁣ ⁣ Various dimensions⁣ ⁣ Image 3 by @alexanderperrelli for @mamaprojects.co by @nicki__cherry
4
6 months ago
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Quadraphonic Crush reviewed by Emma Fiona Jones for IMPULSE ! 🥀❤️‍🔥⁣ ⁣ Thank you @emmafiona for your beautiful dissection of my work. ⁣I’ve highlighted a few sections, but please read the full text, it is well worth your time (link in bio). ⁣ 📙 @impulse_magazine_ 📍 @mamaprojects.co 📸 @alexanderperrelli by @nicki__cherry
5
8 months ago
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This is the last week to see Quadraphonic Crush @mamaprojects.co ⁣ The show started with this work, Desire Stages. Recently I’ve had a lot of people ask me how long my sculptures take to make. It always feels like a difficult question to answer. The physical making of Desire Stages took place over a frantic six weeks, between building the body in Chicago and casting the fragranced candle hearts in New York. The idea for the work took about two months to fully form, finally crystalizing in a conversation at the Thirsty Crow in LA. The emotions that are embedded in this body needed much longer to percolate—the yearning that carved out this chest buried in my unconscious for ten years before writhing to the surface. ⁣ ⁣ When this piece was installed in Venice for @capsuleshanghai, you could hear the soundtrack of Lucy McRae’s video playing in the next door leaking into Desire Stages’ room. After deciding to center my show at MAMA Projects around this sculpture, I knew I needed to include sound. ⁣ ⁣ Desire Stages attempts to compartmentalize the feelings of a crush into four temperaments: cold, melancholic yearning; breath lingering in the air; drunken infatuation; and the sour discomfort of how similar longing and anxiety feel. I made the sound by creating modular synth patches that evoked these same emotions through flickering plucks, glacial wind, erratic bass, and reverbed drone. ⁣ ⁣ Of course, compartmentalizing emotion into a neat set of categories is a fool’s task. Just as the scent blends together as wax drippings build up like intestines in Desire Stages’ chest, the layers of sound congealed into a giant synth patch that I played as a singular instrument. I recorded the final sound in one take. The sound is smeared across the curtained back room of the gallery, in a quadraphonic, four speaker installation. ⁣ ⁣ Thank you to everyone who has engaged with the work. This show is a culmination of many things, and it is very meaningful to have a rather vulnerable body of work received with such warmth. ⁣ ⁣ Quadraphonic Crush is open today (Thursday), Friday, and Saturday this week from 12-6pm @mamaprojects.co ⁣ Photos by @alexanderperrelli by @nicki__cherry
0
8 months ago
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Ask of Voids, 2025⁣ ⁣ Fiberglass-reinforced gypsum cement, concrete pigment, pigmented wax, stainless steel hardware blister pearls, copper plated tulip force-bloomed in previous body of work⁣ ⁣ 26.5” x 28” x 31.5”⁣ ⁣ “Historical sculpture rendered the body as an absolute. Antiquity interpreted this as to communicate an ideal—both of the body and of an idea, an idealization. The artist we’re talking about has a bit of this fundament within her forms. These figures prompt you to think of them as you would any protagonist, someone or something we are meant to address oneself to, in possession of their own finite psyche, except, like us, the characters in this made universe are shaded in the many colors of vulnerability.⁣ ⁣ This is where the sly radicality of the artist’s positions come into focus. Being made in a ⁣day and age where our overlords have monetized and aggregated feeling itself, these ⁣ polite forms present a harsh challenge to the affect economy’s disillusioned subject. ⁣The sculptural actors here insist upon an individualized emotional fertility. There are rich emotional worlds inside these characters (Ask of Voids) that are insisted on but their interiority is vulnerable, at the bounds of control. At times this is rendered literally with young green shoots held within. Floral bounty enrobed in metal.”⁣ ⁣ – Geof Oppenheimer ⁣ ⁣ Last two weeks to see Quadraphonic Crush! ⁣ ⁣ @mamaprojects.co open Thursday - Saturday, 12 - 6pm⁣ ⁣ 📸: Photos 1-2 @alexanderperrelli by @nicki__cherry
0
9 months ago
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Compartment Syndrome, 2025⁣ ⁣ Fiberglass-reinforced gypsum cement, concrete pigment, stoneware, stainless steel hardware, blister pearls, copper plated tulip force-bloomed in previous body of work (2023)⁣ ⁣ 24” x 17.5” x 10”⁣ ⁣ Geof Oppenheimer—my practice’s first mentor and guiding star—wrote the exhibition text for Quadraphonic Crush. Including a snippet below. ⁣ ⁣ “The figures we see before us possess a remarkable freedom of interchange between interior and exterior. Depending on the shape of one’s attunement, we could choose to see this as a success of bodily liberty—we now have the agency to create, mix, and match what we open and close to others. Or we could see in this a frightening vulnerability around what the self and body wants to withhold, present, and hide to others in the name of agency. Protection and freedom is the binary with which we are asked to grapple here.⁣ ⁣ This permeability opens the subjects depicted here to life’s endlessly changing conditions. In this sense they are like us. We react, we choose to let things in, or sometimes work violently to keep them out.”⁣ ⁣ Quadraphonic Crush is open @mamaprojects.co Thursday - Saturday 12-6pm, thru January 24. ⁣ ⁣ First photo by @alexanderperrelli by @nicki__cherry
0
9 months ago
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2025, in spite of the world, was filled with a lot of light. Really grateful to have shown work in some incredible spaces, in the company of some incredible people. Thank you to everyone who supported my practice in ways both big & small. 💜 ⁣ ⁣ Hoping for more light in 2026. ✨⁣ ⁣ 1. Me, Joy, and “Desire Stages” in studio 📸: @echothegecko ⁣ 2. “Holding Pattern” with @capsuleshanghai, in Hong Kong, March. 📸: Teddy Leung ⁣ 3. “Body’s in Trouble” with @mamaprojects.co, at @newartdealers New York. 📸: Adam Reich⁣ ⁣ 4. “Like too-acidic candy made for thrill seeking children” and “Case Study (what material matches the feeling)” with @mamaprojects.co, NADA New York. ⁣ ⁣ 5-6. @acreresidency Session One cuties. 📸: Kate Bowen⁣ ⁣ 7. ACRE ceramics basking in the Driftless sun. 📸: Kate Bowen⁣ ⁣ 8. Pewter casting at ACRE ⁣ ⁣ 9. Jewelry for @chores.world ⁣ 10-11. Learning to electroplate⁣ ⁣ 12. Adapting safer studio practices 😷⁣ ⁣ 13. Learning how to make sound (VCV rack)⁣ ⁣ 14. Re-igniting old hearts (sound on)⁣ ⁣ 15-16. “Quadraphonic Crush” at @mamaprojects.co. 📸: @alexanderperrelli ⁣ 17-19. A few more favorite shots from the studio⁣ ⁣ 20. A David Lynch clip I’ve been going back to throughout the year. ⁣ ⁣ ⁣“These guys arent just a bunch of goofballs, they know that there is plenty of suffering in the world. They spent many years with little iron hooks in their backs up on Sunset Boulevard. But they tell me, that there’s this all pervading happiness underneath everything- and the more time I spend with them, the more I believe it”. by @nicki__cherry
2
9 months ago
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