Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Ron Nagle: Irrational Discovery, the next exhibition in his gallery at 526 West 22nd Street. The exhibition includes twelve new sculptures made over the past three years.

Known for his intimately scaled, meticulous, otherworldly sculptures, Nagle combines traditional and contemporary materials to dazzling effect. Ceramic, porcelain, polyurethane, and resin variously create different textures and finishes, and are painted in hues that range from earthy to electric. As one critic has described, Nagle’s sculptures are “quietly riotous, absurdist but technically virtuosic,” with a deceptively modest scale, measuring no more than six inches in any direction, that “pulls you in close and then punches you on the nose.”

Nagle has referred to his sculptures as three-dimensional paintings, and he cites painters as his primary influences, including Giorgio Morandi, Philip Guston, and Josef Albers. Yet, he maintains that inspiration can come from anywhere: “Everything is a starting place, but you see where it takes you.” The sculptures on view also draw from the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, George Herimann’s “Krazy Kat” cartoons, and Mexican architect Luis Barragán’s built environments. Known for their asymmetrical designs, Japanese Oribe-ware platters are the artist’s latest source of inspiration, informing a series of new landscape sculptures such as Gateway Enabler, whose volcano-like mound erupts with bright, oozing yellow. “I’m trying to create both an object and a place. I want it to be believable,” Nagle has said, “It’s got to have all of it: allure, magic, presence.”