Niklas Asker, Rae Klein, Jorge Peris

Order must be imposed if one is to survive and thrive in a world as chaotic as the one in which we live. We are bombarded with a constant and relentless onslaught of information, both threatening and comforting, personal and existential, immediate and peripheral, physical and ethereal—this everything-all-the-time economy creates an ever-rising tide of anxieties and stressors that our individual skin suits and psyches must adapt to withstand, lest we lose ourselves in the confusion. One’s personal archive of waking life, our routines for controlling the ever-evolving and expanding galaxy of stimulants vying for our respective attention becomes our armor, a layer of protection from the anarchy of the everyday.

Niklas Asker, Rae Klein, Jorge Peris is an exhibition of artists whose practices filter and funnel the aforementioned informational acid hurricane into consumable portions that foster new understandings. Each artist’s voice and methodology is unique, yet complementary to the others. Niklas Asker applies an even-handed emotional logic to personal triumphs and traumas, focusing a singular, steady spotlight on compositions reckoning with the death of a loved one, his wife’s pregnancy, and the search for meaning and beauty through it all in equal parts allegory and representation. A pearl, a ball of light within a skull, a warm glow shining from within a bedsheet become eternal iterations of the same hopeful mantra. Rae Klein’s visual vocabulary isolates references to mankind’s attempts to assert its mastery over the feral world through fear, power, spirituality, or some combination of the three. A monumentally-scaled Maltese swimming in so much of its own perfectly coiffed fur that its mobility is seriously impeded, if not impossible, is both a lullaby to the feral world, and an acknowledgement of man’s place within the hierarchy of species: look what we did to the wolf! Finally, Jorge Peris’s sculptures comprise a collaboration between his body, the natural world, and the voices inside his head. Cattle femurs cast in bronze become everlasting reminders of the impermanence of flesh and the foundations for new structures and systems of perception.

Taken together, Niklas Asker, Rae Klein, Jorge Peris is a sage reminder of art's ability to quantify the unquantifiable and provide an esoteric framework for appreciating the everyday magic and madness all around us.

Niklas Asker (b. 1979, Sweden) lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. Asker studied art at Konstskolan Kuben and Örebro Konstskola where he graduated in 2001. He then enrolled at Malmö Comics Art School and worked in the comics scene for eight years, working with publishers internationally, including Random House Books in New York. Asker’s focus over the last several years has been to examine the blurry border between the figurative and the abstract and how the two can merge to create new visual expressions. Exhibitions include The Shroud, Nicodim Upstairs, Los Angeles (2023, solo); Other Artefacts, Union Pacific, London (2023, solo); Galeria Nicodim: 10 Years, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2023); Winter Salon, Gallery Poulsen, Copenhagen (2021); Christmas Show, Sotheby’s, Stockholm (2021); Portrait Now, Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark (2021); Highly Toxic, Ditaliseum, Malmö (2021); Spring Salon, Liljevalchs Museum of Art, Stockholm (2021), and The Process of Calculating One’s Position, NARS, New York (2019).

Rae Klein (b. 1995, United States) lives and works in Michigan. She graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 2017 with a BFA in Painting. Exhibitions include The Ballad of the Children of the Czar, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2024); DISEMBODIED curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024); POWERPLAY, Nicodim, New York (2023, solo); Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest: 10 Years, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2023); Last Night I Dreamt I Was Running, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2023, solo); DISEMBODIED curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim, New York (2023); LOW VOICE OUT LOUD, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2022, solo); The Comfort in Calamity, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco (2022, solo); BODYLAND, curated by Lauren Taschen, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (2022); End of Eden, Galerie Wolfsen, Aalborg (2022); Todo es de Color, The Curator’s Room, Amsterdam (2022); Paper., BEERS London (2022); Waiting in the Field, The Valley, Taos, New Mexico (2021, solo); I Have My Eye On You, Everyday Gallery, Antwerp (2021); and When Shit Hits The Fan Again, Guts Gallery, London (2021).

Jorge Peris (b.1969, Valencia) lives and works in El Palmar, Valencia, and Bucharest, Romania. Exhibitions include The Ballad of the Children of the Czar, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2024); Permafrost, Nicodim Annex, Los Angeles (2024, solo); Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest: 10 years, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2023); Océano Mar, Conde Duque, Madrid (2023); DISEMBODIED curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim, New York (2023); DISEMBODIED curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2022); L'Innominabile, confuso alla Porta dei Leoni, Magazzino, Rome (2022, solo); Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2021, solo); Michiel Ceulers and Jorge Peris: Endangered Species, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2020); Dark Man a lomos del Pájaro de Fuego, IVAM Instituto Valenciàno d’Arte Moderna, Valencia (2020, solo); Adam’s Resurrection, Sandwich Gallery, Bucharest (2019, solo); Al norte de la tormenta, MAXXI Museum, Rome (2019); Our Lady of the Flowers, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2018); The Hierophant, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2017); Olmo 2017, Luis Adelantado Gallery, Valencia (2017, solo); Portal del angel, Cantina Antinori, San Casciano Val di Pesa, Tuscany (2016, solo); Dolmen, Sinfonia nr. 7, Magazzino D’Arte Moderna, Rome (2015, solo); Tamaris, Chateau de Montbeliard, France (2012, solo); Micro, Aureo, Adela, MACRO, Rome (2010, solo).

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New York

July 11 – August 9, 2024

Press Release

Selected Works