Learn More About "No Wrong Holes: Thirty Years of Nayland Blake"

Feeder 2, 1998
Steel and gingerbread 

The scent emanating from over two hundred gingerbread “tiles” supported by a steel armature that constitute Feeder 2 is as important as the sculpture’s visual and spatial presence. Initially inviting, the gingerbread’s sweet, spiced aroma in time becomes an overwhelming, even nauseating, sensorial experience. One of Nayland’s best-known works, the 7-foot square sculpture references the children’s fairytale Hansel and Gretel, which tells the story of two children who stumble upon a seemingly magnificent cottage built of cakes and candy, but quickly learn that it is a tool of deception and a trap. 

Recently, Nayland shared another experience with me that influenced their conception of this work. As a child, they visited the holiday window displays of New York department stores with their parents and encountered an elaborate display of intricately decorated gingerbread houses constructed in varying architectural styles. See a few snapshots Nayland shared of their childhood trip (circa 1967) below.

Re-made in collaboration with a local baker each time it is exhibited, Feeder 2 coheres Nayland’s attraction to fairytale and fantasy as a mirror onto society and culture with their persistent interest in duality (the scent that is both enticing and nauseating, or the whimsical treat that is also a trap) and ruminations on their own childhood memories and personal associations.

Restraint Device #1 (Lede), 1988 

Restraint Device #1 (Lede) is the earliest of Nayland’s works presented at the List Center; it’s also among the first objects a visitor to the exhibition will encounter. Pictured at right in the photo above, the sculpture is comprised of a chromed metal pole with a plastic grip handle at one end and a set of leather wrist cuffs at the other, leaning casually against the wall, as if set there temporarily. An early work in a series of sculptures that outfit mid-century chairs, metal carts, and other objects with leather wrist restraints, Blake made Restraint Device #1 while living in San Francisco, where they moved after completing their MFA at CalArts. 

Participating in the vibrant LGBTQ, Leather, and Kink communities in the city’s South of Market (SoMA) district, their work at this time was influenced by their lived experience, and marked by a desire to reveal the dynamics of interpersonal relationships as a series of transactions through visual references to BDSM play. In a virtual walkthrough Nayland and I gave of the exhibition, they pointed out that they’d purchased the bondage gear included in their works of this period from businesses in SoMA, which was also the neighborhood where many of the restraint sculptures were first exhibited. Though this context shift of readymade objects would have been particularly legible to SoMA’s denizens and Kink communities, Restraint Device and many of Nayland’s works of this period offer a potent reminder that negotiations of power and control are present in all interpersonal dynamics.