Sub Rosa

Sub Rosa gathers a private practice of collage that runs alongside Ron Nagle's better-known career as a ceramic sculptor, revealing an artist who has spent decades merging vintage postcards with photo-booth self-portraits into small, uncanny tableaux.

Published on the occasion of two exhibitions (Euphoric Recall at Fridericianum, Kassel, and a solo show at Secession, Vienna, both in 2019), the hardcover volume reproduces the collages alongside a text by Nagle and a conversation with curator Massimiliano Gioni. Nagle describes taking hundreds of photographs of himself at a novelty photo booth on San Francisco's 24th Street, then splicing the results into found postcards until a convincing tableau emerged, letting him, in his words, "insinuate myself into a scene from someone else's experience."

Nagle (b. 1939, San Francisco) began as a studio assistant to Peter Voulkos and became a central figure of the California Clay Movement, developing the small-scale, jewel-colored ceramic sculptures for which he is best known he is represented by Matthew Marks Gallery. Sub Rosa documents the parallel, largely unseen collage practice running alongside that sculptural work.