Nicole Eisenman

From drawing and painting to printmaking and sculpture, the work of Nicole Eisenman (born 1965) combines formal experimentation with wide-ranging references to art history. Her critical and often humorous commentary on the ever-changing nature of public life consistently challenges power structures and normative conceptions of gender.
Nicole Eisenman: What Happened documents the breadth of the artist's career with over 200 color illustrations, explored in 10 newly commissioned texts. Essays by curators Mark Godfrey and Monika Bayer-Wermuth survey developments in Eisenman's work since the 1990s, while Chloe Wyma considers Eisenman's recent engagements with national and institutional politics.

At the center of New York–based artist Nicole Eisenman’s (born 1965) sculpture Maker’s Muck, an outsize plaster figure sits hunched over a potter’s wheel, on which a mound of ersatz clay interminably spins. The floor teems with sculptures. Some of the pieces are fully rendered and recognizable: an owl, a ketchup bottle. For this publication, Eisenman has invited 15 authors to follow the trajectories of Maker’s Muck’s various objects in essays, metafictional reflections and other experiments in interpretation.
Authors include: hannah baer, Hannah Black, Durga Chew-Bose, Sheila Heti, Alhena Katsof, Shiv Kotecha, Matt Longabucco, Sam McKinniss, Ryan McNamara, Tess Pollok, Sam Roeck, Jasmine Sanders, Cyrus Dunham, Lynne Tillman and Janique Vigier.

Produced in a limited print run of 500 copies, this special edition conceived in close collaboration with the artist features a silkscreened linen jacket with a tipped-on image inside the flap. Each copy is numbered and has a line of acrylic “muck” hand-piped onto its spine.
At the center of New York–based artist Nicole Eisenman’s (born 1965) sculpture Maker’s Muck, an outsize plaster figure sits hunched over a potter’s wheel, on which a mound of ersatz clay interminably spins. The floor teems with sculptures. Some of the pieces are fully rendered and recognizable: a dog, a ketchup bottle. Eisenman has invited several authors to follow the trajectories of Maker’s Muck and its many objects in essays, metafictional reflections and other experiments in interpretation.
Authors include: hannah baer, Hannah Black, Caren Beilin, Durga Chew-Bose, Cyrus Dunham, Sheila Heti, Alhena Katsof, Shiv Kotecha, Matt Longabucco, Sam McKinniss, Ryan McNamara, Tess Pollok, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Sam Roeck, Jasmine Sanders, Lynne Tillman, Janique Vigier.

American artist Nicole Eisenman (born 1965) is best known for her drawings and paintings, a body of work characterized by black humor; layered references to history, art history and popular culture; and disorienting currents of palpable longing and nightmarish fear. But alongside her paintings, and guided by the same tendency toward experimentation with texture and materials, Eisenman has also created a substantial body of sculptural work. Alternatively abstracted or comically distorted, coarse and dull or vibrating with color, the artist’s sculptures feature the same play of references and brash, in-your-face attitude that has cemented Eisenman’s status as both an artist’s artist and critical favorite. The first publication to focus on Eisenman’s sculptures, Nicole Eisenman: Baden Baden Baden features more than 20 of the artist’s sculptures from recent years and includes 12 new works in painting and sculpture.