Objects in Mirror are Closer than they Appear
Objects in Mirror are Closer than they Appear
October 9, 2026 - december 23, 2026
Philadelphia
Philadelphia-based artist Nick Missel presents Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, his first solo exhibition, bringing together a new series of aluminum-and-resin paintings alongside sculptural furniture from his REM and Alumation collections. Taking its title from the familiar warning etched into a car’s side-view mirror, the exhibition considers the instability of perception and the overlooked materials and objects that structure everyday life. Radiators, scrap metal, foam, and other utilitarian materials become a form of cultural archaeology, cut apart, compressed, twisted, broken, and rebuilt until they begin to lose their original identities while retaining traces of what they once were.
In Missel’s new paintings, fragments of aluminum radiators are suspended within layers of resin, transforming elements of invisible domestic infrastructure into image, gesture, and form. This same process of transformation extends into the furniture, where materials associated with comfort, labor, and industry are pushed into unfamiliar states. Foam becomes structure, metal is repeatedly formed and disrupted, and objects designed to support the body take on bodily qualities of their own. Moving between recognition and estrangement, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear asks viewers to look again at what familiarity has taught us not to see, revealing the histories and memories embedded within seemingly ordinary materials.
