Epitome | Nick Cave, Nato Thompson | An Art Book Series Event

FREE - Auditorium doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Artist Nick Cave discusses his breathtaking new book, Nick Cave: Epitome with Nato Thompson, Chief Curator of Creative Time and contributing author. This definitive monograph surveys the artist’s exuberant and genre-defying Soundsuits, performance work, and sculptural installations, and explores the transformative power of one’s imagination and capacity for fantasy.

Nick Cave’s work may also be seen at the Jack Shainman Gallery in a major solo exhibition which runs from September 4 to October 11, 2014.

Anyone who’s ever encountered one of Nick Cave’s Soundsuits—whether in a gallery or on the street—can’t help but be fascinated with these brightly hued, provocative constructions that function as both costume and sculpture. As electrifying and colorful as the “Soundsuits” it features, Nick Cave: Epitome also showcases his latest performance work, public installations, and sculptural assemblages. The most comprehensive survey of the artist’s work to date, this large-format volume compiles the fantastic Soundsuits, for which the artist is best known, together with his other sculptural work and related projects in video and live performance. The book chronicles the artist’s ingenious use of materials, which began with a Soundsuit constructed entirely from twigs and has since ranged from secondhand rugs and other thrift-store finds to feathers, buttons, beading, and dyed synthetic hair. Dazzling images of Cave’s Soundsuits are presented alongside video stills and performance views that capture the current of joyful energy that runs throughout the work. Essays by Elvira Dyangani Ose and Nato Thompson provide an illuminating critical context for the artist’s practice, and an interview by Andrew Bolton explores the artist’s working process and inspirations. Beautiful, insightful, and exciting, this volume will be a must-have for Cave’s ever-growing audience.

Advance copies of Nick Cave: Epitome , which will not be released until late September, are available exclusively for purchase and signing at this event. 

Nick Cave is an artist, educator and foremost a messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. He received his MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and is a Professor in the Fashion Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2008), Artadia Award (2006), the Joyce Award (2006), Creative Capital Grants (2002, 2004 and 2005), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2001), Cave has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2006. Recent solo exhibitions include Recent Soundsuits (2009) and Ever-After (2011), both at Jack Shainman Gallery; Nick Cave: Sojourn at the Denver Art Museum; Nick Cave: The World is My Skin at Trapholt Museum, Denmark; Freeport 006: Nick Cave at Peabody Essex Museum, Salem; and Fantastic 2012, Lille 3000, Tri Postal in Lille, France. Cave will have a solo show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2016. Public collections include the Brooklyn Museum; Crystal Bridges; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the High Museum; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; the Norton Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Birmingham Museum of Art; the De Young Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Orlando Museum of Art; the Smithsonian Institution; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

Nato Thompson joined Creative Time in January 2007. Since then, Thompson, who is Chief Curator, has organized such major Creative Time projects as The Creative Time Summit (2009–2013), Kara Walker’s A Subtlety… (2014), Suzanne Lacy’s Between the Door and the Street (2013), Nick Cave’s HEARD•NY (2013), Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures (2012), Living as Form (2011), Paul Ramirez Jonas’s Key to the City (2010), Jeremy Deller’s It is What it is (2009, with New Museum curators Laura Hoptman and Amy Mackie), Democracy in America: The National Campaign (2008), and Paul Chan’s Waiting for Godot in New Orleans (2007), among others. Previously, he worked as Curator at MASS MoCA, where he completed numerous large-scale exhibitions, including The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere (2004), with a catalogue distributed by MIT Press. His writings have appeared in numerous publications, BookForum, Frieze, Art Forum, Parkett, Cabinet, and The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest among them. In 2005, he received the Art Journal Award for distinguished writing. For Independent Curators International, Thompson curated the exhibition Experimental Geography, with a book available from Melville House Publishing. His new book Seeing Power: Socially Engaged Art in the Age of Cultural Production was also published by Melville House in 2013.

In its sixth year the program series An Art Book, initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, is a celebration of the essential importance and beauty of art books. The events showcase book presentations and discussions by world renowned artists, critics, curators, gallerists, historians and writers.