Ron Nagle: Handsome Drifter

January 15, 2020–March 14, 2021

Ron Nagle’s small sculptures combine modernism, pop culture, and sensory pleasure in compact, perfect packages.

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Ron Nagle: Handsome Drifter, 2015; ceramic, glaze, catalyzed polyurethane, and epoxy resin; 3 ¾ × 4 × 3 in.; collection of Joachim and Nancy Hellman Bechtle.

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Recorded Saturday, November 14, 2020
Virtual Gallery + Studio: Big Colors and Super Drips

Inspired by Ron Nagle’s art, transform stream-of-consciousness drawings into 3-D forms in this Zoom workshop with artist Julia Sackett.

For ages 6–12 with accompanying adult(s)
Friday, May 8, 12 PM
CANCELED: Gallery Talk: Nathan Lynch on Ron Nagle

Artist Nathan Lynch gives a talk focusing on Nagle’s work ethic, attention to detail, and unflinching pursuit of his best sculpture, as well as his humor and sense of style.

BAMPFA

All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more
Friday, April 3, 12 PM
CANCELED: Gallery Talk: Steuart Pittman on Ron Nagle

Oakland-based artist Steuart Pittman addresses recurring themes of humor, music, craftsmanship, and beauty in Ron Nagle’s work, as well as Nagle’s role as a teacher.

BAMPFA

All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more
Saturday, March 7, 2 PM
Conversation: Ron Nagle and Don Ed Hardy

Artist Ron Nagle is joined in conversation by his longtime friend the internationally celebrated tattoo artist Don Ed Hardy.

BAMPFA
Friday, February 14, 12 PM
Gallery Talk: Juana Berrío on Ron Nagle

Independent curator and writer Juana Berrío presents perspectives on Ron Nagle’s ceramic sculptures through the lenses of painting and music.

BAMPFA
Saturday, February 8, 11:30 AM or 1 PM
Gallery + Studio: Bite-Size Universe of Color, Texture, and Form

Tour the exhibition of Ron Nagle’s work and learn how his sculptures take shape, then make a painting inspired by Nagle’s vibrant and fascinating art.

BAMPFA

For ages 6 to 12 with accompanying adult(s)
Wednesday, January 15, 12 PM
Curator’s Talk: Apsara DiQuinzio on Ron Nagle

Join exhibition curator Apsara DiQuinzio for an engaging, expert tour of Ron Nagle: Handsome Drifter.

BAMPFA
Wednesday, January 15 7 PM
The Night of the Hunter

Robert Mitchum plays a predatory preacher who chases two innocent children across a menacing rural landscape in this eccentric, expressionistic Southern Gothic masterpiece. Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish costar.

BAMPFA

Restored 35mm Print

Past Films

Ron Nagle: Handsome Drifter

January 15, 2020–March 14, 2021

BAMPFA from Home

While the museum is temporarily closed, please enjoy the exhibition through these online resources:

BAMPFA from Home

While the museum is temporarily closed, please enjoy the exhibition through these online resources:

Ron Nagle has made stunning, entirely unique small sculptures since the 1960s, producing a body of work that is as original as it is mischievous. He mixes allusions to modernism, middlebrow culture, and the specific pop sensibility of Northern California in exquisitely formed works that are often no bigger than a few inches. This exhibition marks his first survey in the Bay Area in over twenty-five years.

A student of legendary ceramicist and UC Berkeley professor Peter Voulkos, Nagle participated in an important dialogue with ceramic artists like Ken Price and Jim Melchert from the 1960s onward. He began his career making funky, rough cups and vessels out of earthenware, and by the early 1960s was using low-fire, slip casting techniques, making smoother surfaces and bringing into play the luminous colors that would become his calling card. Later, he also began gluing elements together, muddying the purity of ceramics and allowing more flexibility of form. In his recent works, Nagle continues to diverge from traditional ceramic processes, introducing synthetic materials such as polyurethane and resin.

Nagle integrates varied references—from Japanese tea ceremony to Krazy Kat and art-historical movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, and Pop art—in his series of sculptures. He has said, “I’m just as moved by seeing a 1934 DeSoto Airflow or by listening to ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by the Kinks as I am by most things in a museum.” Many of the artist’s key artistic influences have come from painting, including such diverse figures as Philip Guston, Giorgio Morandi, and Josef Albers. Each sculptural object starts as a casual drawing or a distractedly made doodle, which Nagle then translates into a three-dimensional object that retains the imagistic quality of the original drawing.

Made with an overarching sense of playfulness and linguistic humor, a bodily and architectural sensibility, and a keen attention to color, these finely tuned, pitch-perfect sculptures condense sensory wonder into perfect packages of experience and feeling. Their miniature scale makes Nagle’s odd, elegant, sensual, and sometimes abject objects endlessly surprising models for imagination.

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Ron Nagle: Handsome Drifter is organized by Apsara DiQuinzio, senior curator of modern and contemporary art and Phyllis C. Wattis MATRIX Curator, with Lucia Olubunmi Momoh, curatorial assistant. The exhibition is made possible with lead support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Matthew Marks Gallery, and Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman. Major support is provided by Joachim and Nancy Hellman Bechtle, Chara Schreyer and Gordon Freund, Robin Wright and Ian Reeves, and Joan Roebuck. Additional support is provided by Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein, Alexandra Bowes and Stephen Williamson, Jeffrey Spahn Gallery, the LLWW Foundation, and Dorothy Saxe. Generous in-kind support is provided by Yves Béhar and fuseproject, San Francisco.

Supporter

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts