PREVIEW: Nathalie Khayat-Unfolded Proximities
Throughout her practice, the ceramicist Nathalie Khayat harnesses the inherent material properties of clay to examine the poetic tensions between structure and fluidity, containment and release in objects infused with reminders of human ritual and the fragility of life. Through an intuitive dialogue with clay, Khayat constructs sculptural forms that oscillate between architectural precision and organic vulnerability.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Marianne Boesky Gallery Archive
For “Unfolded Proximities” her debut New York solo exhibition, Nathalie Khayat presents a suite of new sculptures that expand the very possibility of expression in clay. Khayat harnesses the material properties of clay to examine the poetic tensions between structure and fluidity, containment and release, and fragility and endurance in objects infused with reminders of human ritual. Through an intuitive dialogue with clay, Khayat constructs sculptural forms that oscillate between architectural precision and organic vulnerability. With “Unfolded Proximities”, Khayat unleashes the sculptural potential of her material, marking a significant shift in her practice. While the artist’s work has long occupied a liminal space between function and form, Khayat’s newest body of work embraces— and prioritizes—clay’s capacity for emotional resonance over use. Incorporating extruded, hand-built, and wheel-thrown elements into her work, Khayat explores the fragile, transformative spaces where forms meet and boundaries dissolve. Throughout the exhibition, belts cinch clustered, hollow pillars in a tense embrace while wheel-thrown vessels cling to rigid supports as if grafted. In others, undulating petals and reef-like growths cleave to solid, geometric forms that bear faint traces of their functional histories— handles with no spouts, bowls and plates flung to their sides and flipped upside down. The seams of these sculptures— once stark divides where fluid, organic forms encountered exacting supports— become sites of fusion, as bodies and memories dissolve into one another. Negotiations rather than collisions, these quiet convergences attest to the intimacy of coexistence and entanglement as a force for altering identity. Khayat’s process begins with emotional or formal intentions—a spike articulates desire, a tube disrupts symmetry or adds height. But clay, the artist says, insists on its own organic logic, and nature seeps in unbidden: curves remember the weight of water; hollows echo unseen nests, and the material, despite itself, recalls the armor of crustaceans or the reach of deep-sea tendrils. “It is less that I reference nature,” Khayat says, “and more that nature persists in finding its way back into the work. Even in abstraction, we cannot escape its morphology”, The exhibition is deeply informed by place. Beirut is a city at crossroads, a city perpetually on the brink—of East and West, of history and future, of destruction and rebirth—and this persistent threat of cataclysm looms large in Khayat’s work. “My city,” Khayat says, “has been on the verge of collapse for most of my life. We dream, we imagine, we plan, we build knowing that it can all disappear within a fraction of a second.” Clay, for Khayat, embodies the same contradictions as Beirut. Fragile but enduring, clay holds memory and metaphor, finding its form over time and under pressure. As its title suggests, “Unfolded Proximities” is a process of revelation, growth, and transformation in the in-between spaces.
Photo left: Nathalie Khayat, CREAK, 2025, Glazed stoneware, 16 x 19 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches, 40.6 x 49.5 x 41.9 cm, © Nathalie Khayat, Courtesy the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery. Photo right: Nathalie Khayat, THE DEVOURING OF YOU, 2025, Glazed stoneware, 21 1/2 x 23 x 19 1/2 inches, 54.6 x 58.4 x 49.5 cm, © Nathalie Khayat, Courtesy the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery
Info: Marianne Boesky Gallery, 507 West 24th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 26/6-1/8/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://marianneboeskygallery.com/
