When you leave Nayland Blake’s exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, what lingers is not just strange imagery but an unshakable sense of unease. Blake has mastered a style so deft that you enter the show laughing, only to exit feeling the boiling rage beneath those laughs.
This work is truly absurd, meticulously conceptual, and uniquely erotic in its boundary-pushing—a singular art experience.
As you navigate the exhibition, Blake’s most powerful tools—repetition and duality—grab you immediately. In the installation “Equipment for a Shameful Epic,” duplicates of the same Halloween props—plastic nooses and fake scythes—transform from cheap toys into something with chilling ritual power through sheer multiplication. You might resist a single accessory, but in the face of their multiplied presence, it feels as if you are the one in their presence.
Desire and Manipulation in the Shadows The exhibition’s most jolting moments come where desire and manipulation appear in their most endearing forms. “Negative Bunny” is a stuffed, plush rabbit representing a manipulative ex-lover. It whispers in a shrill voice, “You have to let me…,” while right beside it, the bright yellow rabbit “One Down” and a scattered pile of pom-poms evoke the aftermath of a violent crime. Is this rabbit a victim taking revenge, or another perpetrator? Blake deliberately leaves the dilemma unresolved, forcing us as viewers to make a choice.
“Mirror Restraint,” meanwhile, physically draws you into the exhibition. As you approach the BDSM collar stretched between mirrors, the angle of the glass prevents you from seeing your own reflection. This creates a strange, indirect sense of shame—as if it’s not the mirror’s fault but your own worthlessness that has rendered you invisible. This is the pinnacle of Blake’s meticulous conceptualism, which subverts expectations and implicates the body in complicity.
Blake’s art makes you feel the indigestible rage and moral ambiguity behind every laugh. This exhibition pulls us out of the comfortable position of spectator and invites us to realize that the artwork’s dark joke is being played on us.
Exhibition Information:
Artist: Nayland Blake
Venue: Matthew Marks Gallery, Chelsea, New York (Two Locations)
Dates: Continues through October 25.
