Nicole Eisenman

Lanai

Nicole Eisenman’s monumental sculpture entitled Perpetual Motion Machine was first featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. The bronze depicts the artist as a larger-than-life figure perpetually moving a paint stick from which tuna fish cans jangle, a gesture that both expresses the perpetual labor of an artist or, on a more fundamental level, the ever repetitive struggle of every-day life. Situating themselves into a European male dominated history, Eisenman condenses notions of labor and futility, struggle and pleasure, tediousness and hope into a powerful figure that is both rooted in the past and leads to the future.