Page 73 - World of Art Contemporary Art magazine: The 2023 Guggenheim issue

Installation view, Nick Cave: Forothermore, Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum. Photo: Ariel Ione Williams. © Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation, New York.

Installation view, Nick Cave: Forothermore, Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, Photo: Ariel Ione Williams. © Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation, New York

"WHAT IT IS"
explores Cave's aesthetic development in honest In other sculptures, Cave celebrates the enterprising
dialogue with his lived experience as a queer Black spirit of the many people from his family to strangers he
man, examining how political and cultural flashpoints encounters in public whose drive and labor in the formal
sometimes painful, sometimes ben1using inform and informal economies have led to financial stability
his work. Many of the works on view in this section and growth and brought much-needed resources to
exemplify the artist's practice of combining antique communities. Oftentimes, this drive comes in the form
bric-a-brac, which he faithfully and systematically of creative problem solving, leading to fanciful displays
collects, to form his sculptures and installations. Cave like Hustle Coat (2021) that both mirror and influence
is continuously surprised by the sheer number of found the aesthetics of a community that celebrates a "bling
objects that reveal racist attitudes toward Black people. aesthetic'' and insists on a shiny visibility, no matter their
In appropriating such items, he lays bare the ways economic condition. Meanwhile a recent turn toward
in which an American commodity culture has served body casting in works like Arm Peace (2019) reveals
to debase Black people and reinforce stereotypes of Cave's sense of personal urgency, yet ultimate optimism,
servitude and brutishness. in his work against social injustices.

WORLD of ART 71