NYAB Event - Liz Nielsen “Magic Lantern”

Liz Nielsen “Magic Lantern”

Laurence Miller Gallery

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Laurence Miller Gallery presents LIZ NIELSEN: MAGIC LANTERN, the gallery’s first one-person exhibition for this 39-year-old Brooklyn-based photographer. The exhibition features twenty unique abstract photographs that transcend the traditional boundaries of both photography and painting. The recent works on exhibit in Magic Lantern continue Nielsen’s 3-year project exploring harmonies of light, color and composition.

Nielsen’s bold and colorful abstractions present a unique and contemporary use of the medium of photography. She replaces the camera-made negative with a hand-made collage of transparent colored gels, which she then enlarges onto chromogenic paper. In the process a new palette is constructed. The colors of the gels are reversed, sometimes in counter-intuitive ways – transparent areas print black, magenta prints green, overlapping primary colors appear as pastels.

Her evocative compositions bring to mind mid-century abstraction, Victorian magic lantern shows, and centuries-old stained glass windows. As a young girl Nielsen would fill Ziploc bags with colored water and peer through them to see how the world could be transformed. Her recent work is infused with this same playful sense of discovery. Her experimentation with light and color produces luminous compositions, where chance belies the science and precision that go into their making.

Liz Nielsen was born in Wisconsin in 1975. She earned a BFA in 2002 from School of the Art Institute of Chicago, then an MFA in photography from the University of Illinois, Chicago in 2004. Her artwork has been exhibited in group and one-person shows since 2003, from Berlin, Paris, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago to New York. In 2009 she was named a Breakout Artist in Chicago’s New City. In 2011 she received the Dave Brown Project award. Liz is owner/director of Swimming Pool Project Space founded in Chicago in 2008. Her works are in The Progressive Art Collection, the BMO Harris Bank collection, the Aldo Group Art Collection as well as many private collections.

Liz Nieslen’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, and Berlin as well as numerous group shows.

All works are unique chromogenic prints, 2013-2014.