The longer I slip into a crack the shorter my nose becomes / Man’s Best Friend

Raúl de Nieves

The longer I slip into a crack the shorter my nose becomes, 2016

Yarn, dress, glue, beads, cardboard, found trim, apple, taxidermic bird, and mannequin
93 × 37 × 30 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Company Gallery, New York

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The first card in the tarot deck, the Fool, features a young man so preoccupied with staring at the sun, he is completely unaware that he is about to fall off a cliff. In the image on the card, a small dog trails behind him, following the young man to his detriment. The Fool represents the person whose cards are being read. The remainder of the cards in the deck then narrate the trials and tribulations encountered by the Fool as he learns to navigate life and progress from joyous ignorance to embodied knowledge. Both figures presented here, side by side, make a sly nod to the Fool’s journey. The smaller of the two sculptures, titled Man’s Best Friend (2016), depicts a leash around the figure’s neck that is tethered to the larger sculpture, entitled The longer I slip into a crack the shorter my nose becomes (2016). The reference to the figure’s shrinking nose forges a relationship to Pinocchio, whose nose grows longer when he does not tell the truth. Both are dressed in elaborate white costumes. Their red-painted hands and red cross-topped, golden crowns convey a perverse authority that is enforced by their positions of dominance and submission.

–Risa Puleo, Curator

Raúl de Nieves

Man’s Best Friend, 2016

Yarn, fabric, glue, beads, cardboard, found trim, and mannequin
61 × 24 × 20 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Company Gallery, New York