Nicki Cherry “Doctrine of Signatures”

New York Art Residency & Studios Foundation (NARS)

[Image: Nicki Cherry, Photograph of fragment from I keep my secrets from everyone, even from myself taken at Surf Point Foundation, (2023) Image credit to Jake Price.]

This event has ended.

The doctrine of signatures is the theory that plants hold medical properties to heal that which they bear resemblance. Brain-like walnuts cure headaches; plants that look like scorpions are an anecdote to the arachnid’s sting. Signatures are a mark that breaks the surface to reveal its holder’s hidden interior.

The boundary between interior and exterior is similarly dissolved within the works presented in this exhibition. Traversing the gallery, visitors encounter fragmented, figural sculptures made of concrete, fiberglass, and ceramic. The artist has planted live tulips in soil-filled hollows in each body. These tulips will cycle through their lifespan throughout the duration of the exhibition—sprouting, blooming, and eventually wilting.

Nicki Cherry is an artist based in New York and Chicago. After initially studying to become a particle physicist, Cherry received their BA from the University of Chicago in 2014 and their MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019. Their work has been exhibited at GHOSTMACHINE, the Border Project Space, Flux Factory, ELM Foundation and Shin Gallery in New York; AUTOMAT and Icebox Project Space in Philadelphia; the Reva David Logan Center for the Arts and Slate Arts and Performance in Chicago. They have received grants from Café Royal Cultural Foundation, Queens Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. They have completed residencies at Surf Point Foundation in Maine, Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, and NARS Foundation in Brooklyn. Cherry was a 2022 AIM Fellow at the Bronx Museum of Arts.