Exhibition opening: Edible and Firstlings

Edible is an exhibition that explores how Asian-American artists use ceramics incorporating food aesthetics to explore cultural identity, memory, and American society. Our relationship to what we eat is the most intimate possible: the food we consume literally constitutes our bodies, and the ways we consume it link us to each other, our loved ones, and our ancestors. Ceramic sculpture in the form of food has become a way for these artists to explore complex relationships to their identities and bodies.

Firstlings is an ongoing investigation of ceramic sculptures and ink wash drawings that seeks to address the predicament of the human form’s fragility and endless struggle to adapt to life’s ever-changing circumstances. Terry Suhre writes, in his catalogue essay for the first iteration of this exhibition at Bruno David Gallery in 2020, “The ‘predicament’ Nadler refers to in statements on his work is the uneasy, existential awareness of an unsympathetic, and likely hostile, existence that is not predisposed to human wants or needs. A reality that continually tests the body’s (and the spirit’s) limitations, revealing its susceptibility to everyday suffering and humiliation.”