Inside Roy Nachum’s Creative Playground, Mercer Labs
Mercer Labs is not your typical museum, nor does it want to be. Behind the doors at 21 Dey Street in Lower Manhattan lies a creative laboratory, a controlled space well-versed in the experimentation and exploration of unknown territories. The jurisdiction under close examination is—technology—and its illimitable possibilities, which according to Roy Nachum and his visionary partner, Michael Cayre are truly limitless.
Nachum, a multi-hyphenate creative connoisseur with more hyphens attached to his name than concisely put into words; a prolific painter, sculptor, furniture artisan, fashion designer (of streetwear brand, Naïyo), experiential craftsman, and the mastermind behind the 36,000-square-foot new-age art and technology museum, Mercer Labs.
It was the early 2000s, Nachum was a student at Cooper Union, and a recent arrival to New York—a city that stayed on his mind since he watched a Julian Schnabel film as a kid circa Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol era.
“Immediately I knew I wanted to move to New York and live that kind of lifestyle,” Nachum shares. A long-term Basquiat stan, he was enamored by the work and life of Jean-Michel and converted this infatuation into motivation to write his own narrative.
“I do a lot of experiments,” he explains. “Experimental work,” one of which, conducted shortly after his stateside arrival saw the artist go as far as blindfolding himself for a week. For seven days he sacrificed sight out of the desire to experience life without it. His grandmother had fallen victim to a degenerative disease leaving her blind. Witnessing her demise as a young adolescent pushed Nachum to create artistic work that was accessible to everybody.
He wanted to gift those who couldn’t experience visual art the greatest gift, the chance to do so. Shortly after moving to New York, Nachum met Romeo who had lost his vision at the age of 2. After getting kicked out of a museum for accidentally touching a painting as a kid, Romeo never dared to step foot in another, unable to experience art ever again—a thought that perplexed Nachum so much that he dedicated his artistic endeavors to it.
“When you close your eyes, you listen to people, you don’t judge them by the way they look; you judge them by who they are, through your ears, your soul, your heart,” he passionately preaches.
Hence, the braille. It’s more than just a motif. It’s shown up in his work since his first showcase, where he wrote poetry on a canvas using the tactile writing system. “It was white on white. Then I burned the frame till it became charcoal, so when you touch the work it stains your finger,” he explains. This choice, not just artistic in nature, was Nachum’s attempt at helping the visually impaired leave their mark on the canvas.
“I always knew I was going to be an artist. I knew this was what I wanted to do. It wasn’t an easy ride, but I never wanted to work in any [industry],” he shares. The ride started when Nachum put his work on the street in Soho. It was here, on the corner of Spring and Broadway that Jason Strauss the owner of Tao Group walked past and discovered him. At the time Strauss was opening Tao in Vegas and proposed Nachum to do the art, which snowballed into him designing the interiors, furniture, and paintings for New York hot spots from 1OAK to Hunt&Fish Club.
Nachum grew up watching his father paint. “I remember looking at my father’s paintings,” he reflects fondly. “He’d start with a white canvas and transform it into this beautiful hyper-realism piece.” At age three he held his first paintbrush, and he has refused to put it down since. Instead, he continues to add more ‘tools’ to the mix.
Mercer Labs is just that—a large-scale laboratory equipped with a toolbox to conduct these creative experiments. The fifteen rooms within the space are designed as white canvases with the ability to transform into anything; whether it's creating a 4D sound experience with musicians, or pioneering a new 360 way of consuming video with filmmakers—the experimentations are endless.
This idea was one that the multidisciplinary artist had more than eighteen years ago, but the technology wasn’t there to pull it off. So he sat with it. Tired of the galleries boxing him, Nachum created a design firm—Mercer Project—with his wife, Maia Nachum. “Just focus on painting” they’d say, but he wanted to focus on everything. The studio's name, a nod to his 3,000-square-foot Soho loft on, you guessed it, Mercer Street, which is still his place of residence. When it came to this new space, it was clear, Mercer Project would be given new life as Mercer Labs.
“People are saying we invented a new way to experience a museum, and it’s great because I didn’t think about it like that,” he explains. “What I’ve tried to create here is a hub where we can invite incredible artists and sit together and collaborate on art.” It's simple, Nachum wants to work with the culture, with up-and-coming artists who are living and creating here in New York, and with old-school artists who don’t usually work with digital mediums.
Naturally, there’s a tension between the time-honored practice of art, and technology’s rampant development, where artificial intelligence has the potential to undermine the integrity of traditional creativity. But as a forward-thinking creative, Nachum's not concerned, rather he’s excited about the fact the two seemingly competing forces can exist in flux.
He himself is tasked with balancing them too. “Although I’m a very old school painter, mixing my own pigments, I’ve always been interested in technology and using it as a tool,” with this curiosity entangling him in an abundance of creative collaborations like Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism album experience and record label 88rising’s immersive art activation for FAM (Future of Asian Music).
Next on the collaboration agenda is Mercer Lab’s first guest-curated exhibition with Tribeca Festival, consisting of eight large-scale immersive visual and sonic artworks from six different artists on view in the lab from June 6-17. It's easily the first of its kind, and better yet the first of many, as Nachum continues to open the doors to Mercer Labs wide and far because that’s exactly what he set out to do.
Discover more from Mercer Labs here.
