PARIS.- NextLevel Galerie is presenting Liz Nielsen’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, and in fact the first in Paris. Titled ‘Force Fields’the exhibition brings together new photographic works, that which are in line in the formal and conceptual of her work.
The analog color darkroom is a magical place where a pitch-black environment allows only the vision of the mind’s eye. There, and without the use of a camera, Liz Nielsen creates unique photograms by building her own negatives and ‘painting with light’.
The way she works in the darkroom is like a musical performance whereby, mixing colors and harmonies, Nielsen creates new gradients. Working with pure color and the edges of each color within the spectrum, Nielsen adds and subtracts wavelengths, playing with diffusion and refraction.
Nielsen’s negatives resemble flat sculptures with moveable parts into which she pours light. To create them, she cuts out transparent shapes and takes apart handmade cardboard puzzles, then reassembles the different forms in the darkness, layering them in a precise way to allow for multiple exposures on light-sensitive paper. Each piece thus requires much planning yet as controlling light is very difficult, surprises always emerge.
Physically moving around the paper as she exposes it, Nielsen variously uses flashlights, bike lights, laser lights, cell phone lights, an enlarger and toy lights to compose and create her images. With so many variables in the process, it is impossible to create the same image twice, making each photogram unique. The paper chosen for her work is important and Liz prefers Fuji papers, either Lustre or FujiFlex – the latter in particular thanks to its ultra shiny surface “that is so reflective it looks like liquid. It appears to accentuate the transparency of the colors, making them seem to exist both deep inside the paper and on its surface.”
Liz Nielsen (born in Wisconsin 1975) lives and works in Brooklyn, NYC. She received a M.F.A. in Photography at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a B.F.A from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Liz Nielsen is part of this new generation of have returned to the essential elements of analog photography and its processes as subject matter, reimagining the abstract and painterly potential of the medium. Nielsen’s work has been exhibited extensively in solo and group shows in Chicago (Zolla/Lieberman Gallery), New York (Danziger Gallery, Laurence Miller Gallery or David Zwirner Gallery), Berlin, Dublin (curated by Jessamyn Flore), recently in Paris (Paris Photo)...soon a solo show in London (Photo London) but also in Budapest following her artist’s residency. Nielsen’s exhibitions have also been reviewed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Artslant, the Wall Street Journal and Libération among others.
