MELAS MARTINOS presents: ODE TO A GRECIAN FORMULA BY RON NAGLE

The Melas-Marinos building stands proudly in the heart of Athens, its neoclassical elegance glowing with soft natural light, Across all three floors, Ron Nagle’s sculptures feel like secret discoveries. Small, strange, and alive, they sit on their plinths like tiny dancers, funny and mysterious, shapes twisting into something familiar before slipping away: a loaf of bread, a crusty seashell, a melted candle, a cartoon shadow. Nothing stays still, the works hum with quiet energy, as if caught in a moment just before or just after action.

Nagle often cites Krazy Kat creator George Herriman as a major influence. Like Herriman’s desert backdrops inspired by Arizona’s Monument Valley, Nagle’s sculptures carry the heat, humor, and strange beauty of those landscapes. Working with clay, resin, and glaze, he creates what he calls “marshmallow formalism”: forms that are soft and sharp, glossy and cracked, sometimes glowing like candy, other times dry like dust. There’s a quiet joy here, a tenderness that doesn’t explain itself but simply exists: strange, funny, and utterly alive.