Self Portrait with Pets
by Gregory Nachmanovitch
28.03.26-19.04.26
Opening: 27.03.26
1800-2130
Number 1 Main Road
Ossastr. 21a, 12045 Berlin
Self Portrait With Pets is the first European solo exhibition by American artist Gregory Nachmanovitch.
These artworks originated from a detailed 3D model of himself as an adolescent; meticulously constructed using family photos. The model, created for a forthcoming short film, is rigged with an armature and controlled like a complex, high resolution puppet. Other motifs, props, animals and architecture are built from memories of this adolescent period.
Nachmanovitch moves through this environment like a puppeteer working inside a doll's house; animating figures, arranging scenes, pulling the work out from within.
The "pets" of the title speak to this dynamic: his digital creations are not illustrations of ideas but things he has made and, in some sense, looks after. He is not examining the past so much as operating from inside his version of it. What emerges from this process carries a persistent unease. The way a childhood home looks different when you go back as an adult.
The cicada runs through the exhibition as a recurring presence. These insects live almost their entire lives underground, emerging briefly every seventeen years before dying. Nachmanovitch remembers one of these cycles from his Virginia teenage years: the sudden mass appearance, and then the bodies. A long burial, followed by a brief and overwhelming return.
The accompanying video installation of The Captive (2022), orients itself within the same geographical world. Utilizing found footage of the ambling highways of the Blue Ridge mountains, the video plays with the cinematic trope of the car on the ‘rear projected’ road.
In one sense, the film is about an artificial recreation of an obsolete practical effect using modern video-game engines. In another sense, the film is about haunting and nostalgia:
a romance with one’s own fantasy.
Keep an eye out on instagram for details of a closing event, where we will be screening some of Gregory Nachmanovitch’s past projects.
1: Self portrait with pets
51cm x 65cm, 3D rendering, aluminum dibond print with hand engravings, wax pastel, 2026
2: 4 insects
39.5 cm x 35cm, 3D rendering, aluminum dibond print with hand engravings, wax pastel, 2026
3: Stage play
105cm x 87.5cm, 3D rendering, aluminum dibond print with hand engravings, wax pastel, 2026
4: My first dog
52.5cm x 70cm, 3D rendering, aluminum dibond print with hand engravings, wax pastel, 2026
5: Bedroom
75cm x 53cm, 3D rendering, aluminum dibond print with hand engravings, wax pastel, 2026
6: Boy looking
25cm x 40cm, ink & graphite on paper, stainless steel mount, 2025
7: Homestar 1/untitled Adolescent
55cm x 40cm, ink & graphite on paper, stainless steel mount, 2025
8: Nymph
100cm x 160cm x 30 cm, aluminum, single channel video, stainless steel, 2026
9: Boy sketching
25cm x 40cm, ink & graphite on paper, stainless steel mount, 2025
10: The Captive
single channel video and sound, runtime 10:50, 2022
FLOOR PLAN: