Nick Cave: Amalgams and Graphts at Jack Shainman Gallery, Tribeca
January 10 – March 15, 2025
Images courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery and Nick Cave
Nick Cave’s Amalgams and Graphts, inaugurating Jack Shainman Gallery’s Tribeca flagship, delivers a monumental exploration of race, identity, and resilience through two distinct series. The Amalgams, towering bronze sculptures, serve as contemporary monuments that counteract traditional public art’s historical biases. Rooted in Cave’s Soundsuits, these pieces reimagine the human form in dialogue with nature—branching into birds, flowers, and trees. Anchored in humanity yet soaring toward transcendence, the sculptures offer moments of reflection and awe, with Amalgam (Origin) standing nearly twenty-six feet tall, invoking themes of growth and resistance. Cave’s deliberate interplay of personal and public significance within these works sets a powerful tone for both the exhibition and the gallery’s new space.
The Graphts series, meanwhile, introduces an unprecedented intimacy into Cave’s practice. For the first time, the artist’s recognizable visage appears within his work, surrounded by a tapestry of floral motifs and vintage serving trays. These assemblages bridge cultural and aesthetic histories, juxtaposing the genteel connotations of needlepoint with the utilitarian origins of serving trays. This duality underscores the tension between beauty and servitude, privilege and necessity. In folding these histories into self-portraiture, Cave poses probing questions about identity formation, complicity, and the intersecting forces of power and aesthetics. The Graphts resonate as introspective mirrors, prompting viewers to confront their positionality within broader societal frameworks.
Beyond the compelling dialogue between these series, Cave’s exhibition thrives in its contextual setting. The newly renovated Clock Tower Building, with its Beaux-Arts grandeur and historical significance, amplifies the show’s narrative layers. The space’s transformation—from a monument to 19th-century capitalism into a site for 21st-century critical discourse—parallels Cave’s reimagining of monuments. The Amalgams physically and metaphorically fill the gallery’s expansive hall, embodying resilience and renewal, while the intimate Graphts installations provide a more personal counterbalance. This interplay between scale and materiality reinforces the works’ engagement with both collective and individual histories.
Cave’s Amalgams and Graphts reaffirms his ability to traverse the personal and the universal, the monumental and the intimate. As he interrogates cultural hierarchies and systemic power, Cave allows viewers to engage with art as both a reflective and transformative force. In its debut, Jack Shainman’s new Tribeca gallery sets a high standard for ambitious exhibitions, providing a fitting platform for Cave’s urgent and evocative work. This is not merely an exhibition—it is a call to consider the persistent intersections of beauty, history, and humanity.
