Public Notice and Arcane Space are pleased to announce Nick Rose’s forthcoming exhibition, Boy With Thorn, at the Venice gallery. The exhibition will include a variety of new mixed media works. An opening reception with the artist will be held on March 7 and the show will run through March 28, 2026. viewing hours will be held thursday through sunday 10am to 4pm at 324 sunset ave, venice, ca 90291.
Boy With Thorn is the inspection of a nagging pain, the moment of pause in search of relief. In the shows initial reference, Spinario (a Greco-Roman Hellenistic bronze predating the 1160s) a young boy is sat on a stump, bent over, withdrawing a thorn from his heel. The work has been widely reproduced, resulting in replicas placed in collections across the world. Rose came across an iteration of the work at the Frick Collection in New York City. Having dealt with chronic pain for years, he knew what it meant to have a thorn in the heel, to inspect the wound, and to carefully tend to it.
In Boy With Thorn, Rose connects personal and historical references to introspective questions. The paintings and sculptures bear witness to a problem and a solution, the ever-present possibility of suffering and the process of mending. The work’s symbolic imagery call to mind questions of the existential: How do we interact with the inevitable? How do others relate to our suffering? What does it take to study pain and heal oneself of it, alone or as a collective?
