Nick Cave (b. 1959) confronts violence and trauma with hopeful exuberance in vibrant art that ranges from sculpture and installation to video and performance. The best-known works in his ongoing Soundsuits series are sometimes displayed as static objects, but they come to life when worn for performances. The costumes consume a body in beads, sequins, faux fur, dyed hair, buttons, raffia, colorful fabric, salvaged musical instruments and an eclectic gathering of other materials so that a performer is kaleidoscopically transformed.
The humble and widely familiar materials that comprise the Soundsuits — frequently acquired at flea markets and thrift stores — are elevated in these assemblages, reorganized so that they become something majestic. Cave created the first of the Soundsuits in 1992 in reaction to the Los Angeles police department’s beating of Rodney King the previous year. In dramatically masking a person, the suits can, as Cave puts it, “hide gender, race, class — so you’re forced to look at something without judgment.”
Born in Fulton, Missouri, Cave is now based in Chicago and continues to push into new media as he advocates for social justice and empowerment through his art. His study of fiber arts at the Kansas City Art Institute as well as his summers with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in the early 1980s led to his enduring interest in the body. Whether bringing a percussive performance with dancers and horse-like costumes to Grand Central Terminal in 2013 or filling a gallery at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art with a monumental installation of found objects woven with millions of beads in response to gun violence and the deaths of Black people at the hands of police in 2016, Cave reveals the power of joy through dynamic materials.
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Soundsuit #6 (Performance Art, Artistic Expression, Contemporary Art)
By Nick Cave
Located in Kansas City, MO
Nick Cave Soundsuit #6 Year: 2010 Archival Pigment Print on Premium Rag Size: 17 x 12 in. Edition: 200 Signed by hand on label COA provided Ref.: 924802-2069 Tags: #NickCave #Missou...
Archival Paper, Archival Pigment
Ode to Titian's Venus of Urbino
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
16 x 24 inches - Edition 2 of 5 with 2 APs framing is an additional $420. Photography and acting are kindred spirits in the new series by e2 (Elizabeth Kleinveld and Epaul Julien)....
Archival Pigment
Ode to Millais' Ophelia
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
Edition 1 of 3 with 2 APs framing is an additional $525. Photography and acting are kindred spirits in the new series by e2 (Elizabeth Kleinveld and Epaul Julien). Their current ph...
Archival Pigment
Ode to Petrus Christus' Portrait of a Woman
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
36 x 27 inches - Edition 2 of 3 with 2 APs framing is an additional $525. Photography and acting are kindred spirits in the new series by e2 (Elizabeth Kleinveld and Epaul Julien)....
ABS, Archival Pigment
Ode to Vermeer's Woman with a Pearl Necklace
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
16 x 13 inches - Edition 4 of 7 with 2 APs framing is an additional $265. Photography and acting are kindred spirits in the new series by e2 (Elizabeth Kleinveld and Epaul Julien)....
Archival Pigment
Ode to Dyce's Paolo and Francesca II
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
Edition 2 of 7 with 2 APs Framing is an additional $265. Photography and acting are kindred spirits in the new series by e2 (Elizabeth Kleinveld and Epaul Julien). Their current ph...
Archival Pigment
Ode to Manet's Olympia
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
18 x 24 inches - Edition 2 of 5 with 2 APs framing is an additional $420. Shot in New Orleans in 2011, background illustrated by Marco Ventura Inspired by Manet’s Olympia...
Archival Pigment
$2,500
H 24 in W 15.25 in
Adam and Steve, Ode to Hugo van der Goes' The Fall of Man
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
Edition 1 of 5, 2 APs Framing is an additional $420. Photography and acting are kindred spirits in the ongoing series by E2 - Kleinveld & Julien, entitled In Empathy We Trust. The project presents viewers with re-imagined iconic images from the history of art. The collaborators re-envision the work of old master painters beginning with the Flemish Primitives and spanning nearly 600 years. With subjects enacting roles with varied representations of race, age, and sexual orientation, E2’s revisionist Art History works by artists such as van Eyck, Botticelli, Raphael, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Fragonard, Manet and Whistler. Inspired by the original paintings, E2 hopes to “jar viewers” into questioning their own perceptions. They invite viewers to see these images, and indeed the world anew, using humor, wit and playfulness. In addition, they hope that the viewers will see how stereotypes can lead to prejudice and discrimination. The collaboration began in 2010, after completing work on the traveling exhibition and book project, Before (During) After: Louisiana Photographers Respond to Hurricane Katrina. This natural and man-made disaster brought social inequities in Louisiana into vivid focus. Conversations between Kleinveld and Julien revealed their mutual interest in issues of social justice. E2 has been exhibited internationally in institutions such as: Royal Academy of Art (London), Photoville (New York), Gemeentemuseum (The Hague), Palazzo Fortuny (Venice), Museum Castelvecchio (Verona), Galerie SIRIUS (Tokyo), New Orleans Museum of Art and Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans). The duo is represented by JONATHAN FERRARA GALLERY, New Orleans and their work appears in numerous public and private collections, including: Benetton Collection (Treviso, Italy), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Trento, Italy), Hilliard University Art Museum (Lafayette, LA) and The Marks Collection (Houston). Elizabeth Kleinveld is an artist and photographer from New Orleans, now based in Amsterdam, who takes her inspiration from Paul Outerbridge...
Archival Pigment
Ode to Goya's Maya
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
24 x 36 inches - Edition 1 of 3 with 2 APs framing is an additional $525. Photography and acting are kindred spirits in the new series by e2 (Elizabeth Kleinveld and Epaul Julien)....
Archival Pigment
Ode to Vermeer's Woman with a Pearl Necklace
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
36 x 28.5 inches - Edition 1 of 3 with 2 APs framing is an additional $525. Photography and acting are kindred spirits in the new series by e2 (Elizabeth Kleinveld and Epaul Julien...
Archival Pigment
Ode to the Pinching D'Estrées Sisters
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
16 x 24 inches - Edition 3 of 5 with 2 APs Available framing $420 Shot in 2011 in Amsterdam Inspired by an anonymous artist of the Fontainebleau School’s Presumed Portrait of Gabr...
Archival Pigment
$1,875
H 16 in W 10 in
Adam and Steve, Ode to Hugo van der Goes' The Fall of Man
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
Edition 3 of 7, 2 APs framing is an additional $270. Shot in Amsterdam in 2013, background illustrated by Marco Ventura Inspired by van der Goes’ the fall of man, 1470-75 Photogr...
Archival Pigment
Ode to Rigaud's Louis XIV
By E2 - Kleinveld & Julien
Located in New Orleans, LA
Edition 2 of 5 with 2 APs framing is an additional $420. Photography and acting are kindred spirits in the new series by e2 (Elizabeth Kleinveld and Epaul Julien). Their current ph...
Archival Pigment
NICK CAVE DOUBLE SIDED, INFLATABLE PUNCHING BAG
By Nick Cave
Located in New York, NY
Standing a full five-feet tall and donning a multi-colored human-hair Soundsuit on one side and a swirling sequined Soundsuit on the other is every kids perfect sparring partner. Fil...
Plastic