Leslie Nagel

In this installation, balls roll automatically around by themselves crisscrossing the space. Visitors can sit on benches made of springs. This had been on view during the exhibition Your Playground that was open at museum night Amsterdam at ARTI ET AMICITIAE.

Voor tentoonstelling Must See, in opdracht voor het Zuiderzee Museum Op de dijk staat de bewegende sculptuur van kunstenaar Leslie Nagel. Met het oer-Hollandse beeld van de molen in gedachten, heeft zij een door de wind aangedreven, kinetische installatie gemaakt.

‘Room to Live’ is a duo exhibition by Leslie Nagel (NL) and David Powell (UK) The title of the exhibition is taken from a song by Manchester band The Fall (1976-2018) and reflects both artists shared interests in energy, movement, sound, music, tainted glamour and the hand crafted object in a post digital world. The artists works are not a refutation of the digital, more an investigation into the consequences of living in the computer age. Once upon a time television and radio were mediums with huge experimental potential, nobody really knew what these mediums would birth which made them irresistible as the language had not been learnt, soon enough ‘regulation’ set in and programme schedules needed to be filled. So here we are perpetually sharing and consuming images, endlessly texting through cracked screens. Nagel and Powell take their time with things, they’re both equally fascinated with lo-fi analogue processes, things that leave indelible traces of subjectivity and inwardness, a give and take between skill and (de)skill, learning and unlearning. A healthy suspicion of established institutions can compel redirection so a restart can take place, the studio becomes a testing ground for necessary and urgent challenges to common held presumptions. Is the past tomorrow? History ushered into the present tense? In 1843 Søren Kierkegaard wrote a book about repetition; that it was a kind of ‘recollection forwards’. Nostalgia is too often underestimated. Do forms of time travel exist outside of sci-fi? There remains a collective desire to possess things when you know the object of your gaze and desire cannot be grasped. Just out of Reach. The exhibition will consist of sculptures, paintings and drawings that embody an attitude that strips away the fluff of the mainstream revealing something previously lost about to be reclaimed, a language? An escape route? A temporary journey into pure unequivocal joy? And when you smile. You know you blind me. To all the horrors I see. David Powell, October 2021

‘Room to Live’ is a duo exhibition by Leslie Nagel (NL) and David Powell (UK) The title of the exhibition is taken from a song by Manchester band The Fall (1976-2018) and reflects both artists shared interests in energy, movement, sound, music, tainted glamour and the hand crafted object in a post digital world. The artists works are not a refutation of the digital, more an investigation into the consequences of living in the computer age. Once upon a time television and radio were mediums with huge experimental potential, nobody really knew what these mediums would birth which made them irresistible as the language had not been learnt, soon enough ‘regulation’ set in and programme schedules needed to be filled. So here we are perpetually sharing and consuming images, endlessly texting through cracked screens. Nagel and Powell take their time with things, they’re both equally fascinated with lo-fi analogue processes, things that leave indelible traces of subjectivity and inwardness, a give and take between skill and (de)skill, learning and unlearning. A healthy suspicion of established institutions can compel redirection so a restart can take place, the studio becomes a testing ground for necessary and urgent challenges to common held presumptions. Is the past tomorrow? History ushered into the present tense? In 1843 Søren Kierkegaard wrote a book about repetition; that it was a kind of ‘recollection forwards’. Nostalgia is too often underestimated. Do forms of time travel exist outside of sci-fi? There remains a collective desire to possess things when you know the object of your gaze and desire cannot be grasped. Just out of Reach. The exhibition will consist of sculptures, paintings and drawings that embody an attitude that strips away the fluff of the mainstream revealing something previously lost about to be reclaimed, a language? An escape route? A temporary journey into pure unequivocal joy? And when you smile. You know you blind me. To all the horrors I see. David Powell, October 2021

Onderdeel van de openstelling tijdens IPIHAN#10 in Rotterdam

Pleated fabric rotates

See video: https://vimeo.com/373407951

See video: https://vimeo.com/373405072

"THE WIDTH OF A CIRCLE" at W139. In this I collaborated with Aura Rendón Benger. The visitor is provoked to press a red button. This causes the electromagnet to drop down the object hanging from it. Through the control panel, the visitor can operate a hoist motor and hang the object on the magnet. The three objects are based on mathematical platonic bodies. These structures take different shapes each time they are dropped and hoisted up.

See video: https://vimeo.com/280916848

Een installatie in samenwerking met Aura Rendon Benger

This sculpture is getting into motion by a motor and creates a circular movement. This figure produces friction between materials without that they even touch each other. It tries to break free by pulling and banging the concrete block. Shown in the exhibition 'De Loop der Dingen - over oorzaak en gevolg' Kunsthall KadE, Amersfoort (2016). The reason for the exhibition was the movie Der Lauf der Dinge by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. My work was shown in the big hall along with work of Gerrit van Bakel, Zoro Feigl and Roman Signer. (see in video) See video: https://vimeo.com/160757998

A response to Paul de Jong's paintings.

See video: https://vimeo.com/166229918 An arm slowly pulls on a sieve and changes the face. The movement is abrasive. It makes a squeaking and crackling sound. I have several versions of this work.

This object rotates slowly around its axis, brushing tassels gently over a pillar.

In dit werk wordt de bezoeker uitgenodigd via een trap een podium op te stappen, daar aangekomen zakt de vloer naar beneden en ploppen vaandels uit kieren van het plateau omhoog Onderdeel van de tentoonstelling: Where art we going? in Nest (hout, metaal ,plastic)