NICK MISSEL by Wexler Gallery

NICK MISSEL

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1989, Nicholas Missel began his artistic journey with an interest in painting and photography. However, guidance from faculty at the Kansas City Art Institute inspired him to pivot to sculpture, where he earned a BFA. Frustrated by the “look-but-don’t-touch” philosophy often associated with traditional sculpture, Missel explored furniture design as a way to combine sculptural techniques with interaction, viewing it as an extension of his 3D practice rather than a distinct career path. This exploration deepened during his time at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he attended as a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar and earned an MFA in sculpture in 2016. Following his MFA, Missel attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, where a car mishap led to the discovery of his Negatives series, a body of work that

continues to inform his practice today. “The engine of my 1986 Chevy truck blew up while I was in Maine, and I had to replace it,” Missel recalls. “The truck was a classic, a piece of American muscle—there was something nostalgic and poignant about reviving this ‘dead heart of America.’”

Eager to cast a resin replica of the broken engine, Missel inadvertently rushed the process, peeling the silicone mold too soon. Instead of a failure, the outcome revealed unexpected beauty. “It was far more evocative than I’d imagined,” he reflects. “It captured the fragility and vitality I was trying to convey better than my original idea.”

The resulting distortion captured a sense of both decay and perseverance, mirroring the faded yet enduring spirit of Americana represented by the Chevy engine—a striking testament to finding creativity in the unexpected.

Missel’s conceptual rigor and evocative materiality distinguish him as a compelling voice in contemporary design. His work explores what he calls a “cultural archaeology of the working class,” transforming overlooked objects into responsive sculptures that navigate the boundaries of past, present, and future. Through a sculptural process that often incorporates silicone and resin, he reimagines these objects as otherworldly yet grounded forms, evoking a surrealism while retaining the tactile essence of their source material. Like the negative of a photograph, his works maintain a connection to their original form but evolve to possess their own identity. While his designs, made entirely from postconsumer waste, may not outwardly appear eco-centric, their unexpected comfort invites a deeper conversation about waste and its possibilities.

ALUMATION

Nick Missel’s Alumation Collection transforms salvaged car radiators into striking sculptural furniture through an intensive process of deconstruction and reconfiguration. Missel begins by sourcing bales of aluminum radiators from salvage yards, meticulously pulling them apart to reveal their intricate, machine-made patterns. These fragments are then reassembled into new forms— sometimes tightly composed to retain but obscure the industrial origins, other times arranged more loosely, where individual strands of aluminum take on an ethereal, almost smoke-like quality.

To enhance these compositions, Missel impregnates the negative spaces with resin, creating a fascinating interplay of texture and transparency. This technique is exemplified in works like the Gravity Well mirror, where delicate strands of aluminum appear to float in suspension, and the Core

table, where the material’s innate structure is both celebrated and transformed into something entirely new. By seeing the inherent beauty in these otherwise banal components, Missel reimagines them as objects of art and design, offering a fresh perspective on the value of overlooked materials.

Two of the most ambitious works in Nick Missel’s Alumation Collection are the sculptural lounge chair Breakpoint and the open-shelved credenza Letters After Midnight. These imposing pieces of functional design push the boundaries of traditional materials and processes, embodying a bold reimagining of form and texture. Breakpoint twists and undulates with a muscular energy reminiscent of Rodin’s sculptures, while Letters After Midnight expands the concept into a larger, more architectural scale, its open shelving and fractured surfaces

creating a sense of dynamic tension. In both pieces, the fragmented aluminum patterns are tessellated into an otherworldly visual language of glyphs, blending industrial precision with organic complexity. These works exemplify Missel’s ability to transform raw, salvaged materials into objects that are as conceptually rich as they are physically compelling.

Alumation Collection: Breakpoint (Al001), 2024

37 x 54 x 27 inches

Aluminum radiators, resin fiberglass

Alumation Collection: Letters After Midnight, 2024

Aluminum radiators, resin fiberglass

37 x 54 x 27 inches

Alumation Collection: New Age, 2024

Aluminum radiators, resin, mirror

30 x 30 x 6 inches

Alumation Collection: Gravity Well, 2024

Aluminum radiators, resin

48 x 48 x 2 inches

Alumation Collection: Core, 2024

Aluminum radiators, resin, fiberglass

21 x 16.5 x 16.5 inches

18 x 18 x 18 inches

Infrathin Collection, 2024

SIlicone, memory foam

INFRATHIN

The progeny of his “Negatives” series, Missel creates his Infrathin Collection of tables and benches using his signature silicone casting technique. French-American painter Marcel Duchamp came up with the term Infrathin to refer to a rapidly fading trace or aura of something that was, similar to the “warmth of a seat that has just been vacated.” To create the works in this series, Missel uses compressed bales of discarded cardboard packaging and expertly casts and layers a skin of silicone around them. The small benches range from bright, candy-colored cubes to grayscale “negatives” that echo their original remnants, all while offering sculptural seating and surfaces to interior spaces.

Say Missel, “The coalescence of our waste defines us and connects us across economic backgrounds. Boxes for diapers, avocados, appliances tell a story of our lives, our communities, our memories, our hopes.”

18 x 18 x 18 inches

Infrathin Collection, 2024

SIlicone, memory foam

18 x 18 x 18 inches

Infrathin Collection, 2024

SIlicone, memory foam

REM

The REM Collection refers to the dream state where our minds are most active, wandering, expanding, and getting lost deep within ourselves. The artist’s REM collection is created by contorting and freezing mattress egg crate foam with resin. Says Missel, “I ask these materials to become something they don’t want, soft becomes hard, collapse becomes structure.” Missel was drawn to the industrial aesthetic of the repeating pattern of the egg crate foam and how it overlaps with nature, allowing these characteristics to contrast with the flat planes and create both friction and cohesion in the work.

A continuation of the REM Collection series first introduced at Design Miami LA 2024, Missel’s monumental 8-foot Double Knot table reimagines the utilitarian egg-crate foam, freezing its tessellated texture in resin to create a functional sculpture that is both captivating and conceptual.

Without compromising functionality, Misse’s work swings big, and is increasingly hard to categorize. “If I was just playing around with form and material, I would call myself a furniture designer,” he says. “But I think there’s more to it—I hope that each piece is surprising, exciting and a unique experience that you can’t really find anywhere.” The sculptures are otherworldly, almost digital, transporting you to the realm of fantasy while simultaneously grounded in the real texture and forms of the remnants of the objects they come from.