Ron Nagle’s "The Tempramentalist," 2015, left, and Giorgio Morandi’s "Still Life," 1963, right.

Ron Nagle’s "The Tempramentalist," 2015, left, and Giorgio Morandi’s "Still Life," 1963, right.

Ron Nagle's Morandi Worship

An Italian master whispers to an American ceramicist

interview and review

Ron nagle "Five O'Clock Shadow," Matthew Marks Gallery, September 11 - October 24, 2015
Giorgio Morandi, Center for italian modern art OCTOBER 9, 2015 - JUNE 25, 2016

Modern Painters, February, 2016

The Tempramentalist is Nagle’s most straightforward tribute to the Italian painter. A gleaming golden shape sneaks between two monoliths of stucco gray. There, as in Morandi’s best work, the border is an entity unto itself. There’s friction where things meet, in that living edge not inherent to each object. Morandi’s bouquets of vessels cast ambiguous shadows. “He’s fooling the audience,” says Nagle, who, working in three dimensions, can afford more outlandish inventions while remaining beholden to gravity.