November Viewing Room

Vielmetter Los Angeles is delighted to present Nicole Eisenman’s 2019 bronze sculpture Man at the Center of Men, currently on view in the Gallery’s Greenhouse space, alongside a selection of works by gallery artists Edgar Arceneaux. April Bey, Kim Dingle, Karl Haendel, and Rodney McMillian.

First featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, Man at the Center of Men epitomizes Eisenman’s radically indeterminate and open approach to making narratives, metaphors, and allegories about the human experience. Shown on the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 6th-floor terrace, Man at the Center of Men was a central element of Procession, the artist’s 2019 installation of eleven disparate figures. As the 2020 election loomed during the Whitney exhibition, the pointed content of the Procession installation aligned with the tumultuous political climate at the time. Now, in another historical moment of civil and political division, Eisenman’s work presciently exists in the gap between art and life.

The distinctly humanist focus of Procession has roots in Eisenman’s irreverent and humorous painting practice. One of the most significant artists working today, Eisenman works fluidly across figurative paintings, prints, and sculptures, and focuses on the affective, expressive potential of the human form. Fusing art historical references, lowbrow humor, and political engagement, she combines satire and anxiety to explore the individual and collective pathos of the human condition.

Man at the Center of Men stands uniquely apart from Eisenman’s Procession as an uncanny monument to the precarious experience of life in the 21st century. The sculpture features a figure sunning their face with two reflective trashcan lids while being carried on the back of another figure. This bonded pair suggests myriad possible interpretations from reflections on the abject conditions that make possible the experience of privilege and leisure to the entanglements and obligations of mutual aid, generosity, and exploitation. Neither separate nor mutually exclusive, this expanded possibility of meaning highlights the ineffable experience of being human—grief and terror exist alongside joy and abundance.

Man at the Center of Men has been exhibited at The Contemporary Austin in Austin, Texas; the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo, Norway; and at the Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany. Nicole Eisenman is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2018. Recent solo exhibitions include the critically acclaimed 2023 survey exhibition Nicole Eisenman: What Happened at the MCA Chicago (co-curated by Mark Godfrey and Monica Beyer Wermuth, the exhibition originated at the Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany, and then traveled to the Whitechapel Gallery, London); Giant Without a Body, at the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway; Sturm und Drang, at the Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX;  Baden Baden Baden, at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden, Germany; Dark Light, at Vielmetter Los Angeles; Dark Light, at Secession in Vienna, Austria; and Al-ugh-ories, at the New Museum, New York. Their work was included in both the 2019 Venice Biennale and the 2019 Whitney Biennial.