Rona Pondick’s "Lead Bed" Acquired by the McNay Art Museum

Rona Pondick, Lead Bed, 1987-88, wood, bronze, lead, and satin pillow, 11 x 24 1/2 x 72 1/2 in | 27.94 x 62.23 x 184.15 cm

Nunu Fine Art is pleased to announce that Rona Pondick’s “Lead Bed” (1987-88) has been acquired by the McNay Art Museum. 
 
In this work, somewhere between sculpture and assemblage, a sheet of flattened lead sits folded atop two planks of wood, folded inwards at its top right corner. The addition of a pillow with a white satin case on one end of this otherwise unassuming construction places it in a recognizable context, allowing the viewer to identify the everyday object lent by its title. The surface of the metal sheet is uneven, giving the impression that it was placed onto the wooden planks below it with ease, in the haste of an early morning. The fold in its corner acts as an invitation to climb inside for a moment of respite. Disrupting the bed’s inviting quality is an oblong object laid atop the satin pillowcase, an unidentifiable scrap of gnarled brass. “Lead Bed” is an early example of Pondick’s engagement with the uncanny and psychologically charged in her work, qualities that she would later explore through use of bodily fragments such as shoes, teeth, and even casts of her own head. 
 
Rona Pondick was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1952 and gained an MFA from Yale University in 1977. She was recently featured in "Bellmer Nauman Pondick: Material Desire," an exhibition at Nunu Fine Art New York which placed a selection of her sculptures in conversation with Hans Bellmer’s vintage photographs and Bruce Nauman’s early video works. In addition, the artist’s work is included in the collections of 52 institutions worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others.