Fallen Angels: Home, Work and a Darkening World

Description

Nicole Eisenman’s Fallen Angels marks a shift inward, trading crowded tableaux for a quieter, more concentrated register. Across 11 paintings and three sculptures, the artist maps three sites of middle-class life — home, work and beach — though the first two seem to collapse into one another. Figures hesitate, linger and repeat gestures, as time thickens within familiar interiors. The modest scale belies the work’s intensity: attention, rather than spectacle, becomes the central demand.

The titular painting, “Fallen Angels,” echoes legendary filmmaker Wong Kar-wai’s neo-noir and introduces a crucial note of darkness that permeates the exhibition. Glimpsed skies turn violent, streets glisten with noirish unease and even a cup of coffee takes on epic overtones. If the spaces feel intimate, the world outside presses in, shadowy and inescapable. The artist’s achievement lies in sustaining this tension, finding strangeness and gravity in what is closest at hand.

Residing and working in New York, Eisenman is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2018. Her work was included in both the 2019 Venice Biennale and the 2019 Whitney Biennial.