Power Walking - two person show at PUBLIC Gallery with Elizabeth Glaessner

Excerpt from press release:Through a new series of works created in dialogue, both artists explore themes of metamorphosis, gender and ritual that challenge and re-cast traditional power structures.

Nestler’s soft sculptures often take the form of clothing and accessories, highlighting the ways that gendered stereotypes play out on the body. Through reinterpreting loaded garments and objects into oversized soft sculptures and wall hangings that straddle humor, shame and pride, she instills an omnipotent feminine power into the iconic items she recreates. Her piece Leggings for a Satyr forms a whimsical dialogue with some of Glaessner’s figures, while emasculating the image of these sexual deviants who historically faced no consequences for their actions. In a nod to the artist’s ongoing Power Suit series, her all leather piece, The Hand that Feeds, offers a depiction of femininity gone too far; a hand reaching out from the wall with long white fingernails curling just above the floor, it celebrates an animalistic impracticality, taking ownership over its condition and rejecting a fate of objectification.