Homeseek

Nelly Agassi’s works are identified with the figure of the slender woman who recurs as a self-portrait of sorts in large-scale sculptures as well as small-scale drawings. This minor exhibition strives to shed light, for the first time, on her modestly sized two-dimensional works. It features near-miniature models of self-made icons with which she has been engaged in the past decade, since moving to Chicago.

Agassi presents four series of small works: drawn, sewn, and embroidered dresses; a model of a house obtained by cutting, excavating, and burrowing in black oak tag; collages depicting the woman as a house, a blueprint, a constructive woman, and a great mother; and a combination of past embroideries and delicate gold jewels, some shaped as predators, which spawns a new surreal language all her own.

Via embroidery, she creates remedial, elegant, and optimistic beauty which is born from movement between contrasting axes: small and large, death and life, black and white, sculpture and drawing, Israel and America, past and present, adolescence and motherhood.