Announcing the Representation of Isabel Nolan

Image courtesy of Isabel Nolan.

Sikkema Malloy Jenkins is pleased to announce the representation of Isabel Nolan, in collaboration with Kerlin Gallery in Dublin.

Isabel Nolan’s expansive practice unites sculpture, textile, painting, and drawing within a constellating model of artistic inquiry and meaning-making. Nolan is fascinated by the contingency of history and the inter-subjectivity of human experience. Her subject matter is drawn from chance and cumulative encounters with a wide variety of sources, including historical records, hagiographies, literary and artistic traditions, and cosmological phenomena. The material scope and scale of her practice are similarly expansive, ranging from architectural sculptures and monumental tapestries to colored pencil drawings and water-based oil paintings on canvas. Drawn to both intimacy and vastness, Nolan’s work reveals the strangeness and beauty of a shared existence within an immense universe.

Isabel Nolan will represent Ireland at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia from May 9 to November 22, 2026. The commission’s title, Dreamshook, refers to the sensation of waking from a dream, when reality is temporarily destabilized and alternate realms of experience linger and dissipate. Nolan’s installation for the Irish Pavilion comprises hand-tufted tapestry, drawing, and sculpture in an exploration of dream states and thresholds. The project engages narratives spanning the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance, incorporating influences from Christianity, humanism, and Italian painting and architecture. Dreamshook reflects Nolan’s interest in the resonance of the past with the present and the dissolution of boundaries between the intangible and the real.

Isabel Nolan (born 1974) lives in Dublin. Recent solo exhibitions include 499 Seconds at Chateau La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France (2023); flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict at Void, Derry, Ireland (2022); and A delicate bond which is also a gap at Solstice Art Centre, Navan, Ireland (2021). Nolan was included in the 2025 Liverpool Biennial BEDROCK, presenting work at the Walker Art Gallery and a newly commissioned outdoor sculptural installation at the John Moores University.

Nolan’s work is included in the public collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; and TATE Britain, London, among others.

Exhibition Walkthrough: Cameron Martin and Hal Foster

in

Cameron Martin: Baseline Exhibition Walkthrough
Saturday, October 11 at 1pm

Courtesy of Cameron Martin.

Courtesy of Hal Foster.

The final day of Cameron Martin’s exhibition Baseline, please join us for an exhibition walkthrough led by Martin and art historian Hal Foster. The two will guide visitors through the show and discuss the works on view in the context of Martin's artistic practice. The event is free and open to the public; no RSVP required.

Hal Foster is the author of numerous books, including, mostly recently, Fail Better: Reckonings with Artists and Critics (MIT Press, 2025), What Comes After Farce? Art and Criticism at a Time of Debacle (Verso, 2020), and Brutal Aesthetics (Princeton University Press, 2020), his 2018 Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery in Washington. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he teaches at Princeton University, co-edits the journal October, and contributes regularly to the London Review of Books.

The 2025 Genesis Facade Commission: Jeffrey Gibson, 'The Animal That Therefore I Am' at The Met Fifth Ave

For the 2025 Genesis Facade Commission, Jeffrey Gibson invites reflection on the interconnected relationships between all living beings and the environment. Drawing from his distinctive style fusing Indigenous worldviews and imagery with abstraction, text, and color, Gibson has created four-large scale figurative sculptures for The Met Fifth Avenue’s exterior.

Titled The Animal That Therefore I Am, the installation transforms the Museum’s neoclassical facade into a dynamic stage for Gibson’s ambitious vision of figural presence and ecological kinship. Each 10-foot bronze sculpture takes the form of a regional animal: a hawk, a squirrel, a coyote, and a deer. Using cast elements such as wood, beads, and cloth to build texture, Gibson embraces a new process that expands his sculptural vocabulary. From these reproduced wood supports emerge referential animal forms, with each sculpture formally fusing the animate and the inanimate. Intricately bold, patinated abstract patterning evokes beadwork and textiles drawn from a range of Indigenous visual languages—motifs that are seamlessly integrated into the sculptures’ surfaces.

The works are inspired by Jacques Derrida’s book The Animal That Therefore I Am, which examines the violence inherent in the human domination of animals—a theme Gibson connects to broader cycles of conflict. By selecting species native to the New York area, he reflects on how these creatures have been forced to adapt to human environments, inviting us to consider what they endure and what they might teach us. Flanking the Museum entrance, the zoomorphic forms remaining in dialogue with the surrounding landscape, from the natural environment of the Hudson River Valley, where Gibson lives and works, to the urban ecology of Central Park encircling The Met.

To learn more about The Genesis Facade Commission: Jeffrey Gibson, The Animal That Therefore I Am at The Met Fifth Ave, click here.

Featured
In Jeffrey Gibson’s Sculptures, Child’s Play and Indigenous Truths
In Jeffrey Gibson’s Sculptures, Child’s Play and Indigenous Truths

Martha Schwendener for The New York Times
September 11, 2025

Jeffrey Gibson’s Guardian Animals Grace The Met’s Facade
Jeffrey Gibson’s Guardian Animals Grace The Met’s Facade

Lisa Yin Zhang for Hyperallergic
September 11, 2025

The Met Facade Gets an Indigenous Makeover
The Met Facade Gets an Indigenous Makeover

Kelly Crow for The Wall Street Journal
September 11, 2025