THE FRONT NYC - SOLO EXHIBITION PRESS RELEASE

The Front is honored to present TERSA BRUTA, a solo exhibition by Nicole Elkins, an artist whose practice delves into the raw edges of material, memory, and form. The exhibition examines the fragile tension between protection and vulnerability, permanence and decay, constraint and release—states that are both physical and psychological.

Elkins works with a visceral palette of raw, tactile materials—barbed wire, fabric, metals, clay, wax, porcupine quills, and netting—arranged in compositions that hover between shield and wound, relic and fragment. These materials, both industrial and organic, are shaped into surfaces that appear restless, strained, and alive with contradiction. Their gestures suggest an ongoing negotiation between holding and breaking, concealment and exposure, control and surrender. Each work evokes the presence of internal conflict, echoing the delicate tensions of thought and emotion as they manifest in physical form. What results is a landscape of boundaries and fragility, where beauty emerges not from resolution but from the bound, the frayed, and the fractured. Elkins’ approach is deeply informed by her own history in the world of fashion. A New York–born and based artist, she is an alumna of the Fashion Institute of Technology and spent her early career inside the ateliers and production rooms of Oscar de la Renta, Helmut Lang, and Ralph Lauren. There, she became fluent in the language of fabric and construction, cultivating an acute sensitivity to texture, weight, and finish. Beyond the polish of couture, however, she discovered a profound attraction to rawness—the discarded textiles, trims, and fragments left behind in production. These remnants became the seed of her studio practice, where she reanimates them by merging with metals, clay, wire, and other uncompromising materials. 

Through this alchemy, Elkins creates works that exist in the space between object and relic, structure and skin. They are simultaneously fragile and resilient, brutal and delicate, fixed and dissolving. TERSA BRUTA invites viewers to step into this unstable terrain, to encounter objects that resist easy categorization, and to consider how beauty might reside within rupture, strain, and imperfection.