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.

The work of New York-based artist Nicole Eisenman (born 1965) blends influences from Western art history and traditional figurative art with elements of punk, feminist activism, queer identity and humor in profoundly unique works. Published in conjunction with the 2020 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize exhibitions—Nicole Eisenman: Sturm und Drang, presented at the Contemporary Austin, and Nicole Eisenman and Keith Boadwee, presented at the FLAG Art Foundation in New York—this project represents the first in-depth exploration of Eisenman’s sculptural practice. The catalog features full-color illustrations and original texts by Heather Pesanti, Stephanie Roach and Jonathan Rider, Alhena Katsof, Litia Perta, and Nicole Eisenman, as well as a conversation between artists Eisenman and Boadwee. The book reflects on various aspects of these two exhibitions, with a focus on Eisenman’s recent shift toward sculpture as both a new focus and always-present undercurrent in her work brought to the surface.

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.