Liz Nielsen: Tracing the Azimuth

SOCO Gallery is thrilled to present Tracing the Azimuth, a new series of unique photograms by Liz Nielsen. The gallery will host a public opening reception on Wednesday, May 16 from 6 – 8PM. This will be the artist’s second solo exhibition with SOCO Gallery.

For Tracing the Azimuth, Nielsen is unveiling two years of new works, which were born of an experimental process that she developed; one which allows the artist to gain a mastery and control of light creating an ethereal, painterly quality in the photographs. New colors, including greens and pastels, are now possible as well as an overall transcendent tonality to the highly reflective works. She accomplishes these colors and qualities by removing sections of a handmade negative that rests directly onto the Fujiflex light sensitive paper. By using colored lights to expose sections of the surface, Nielsen is ultimately able to blur the boundaries of space to create these luminous “light paintings”.

The resulting imagery is reminiscent of mountainous landscapes, celestial objects, and ethereal horizons, each vacillating between representational and abstract. The exhibition will also include works that mirror each other in diptychs and triptychs. Similar to Claude Monet’s Haystacks, and Rouen Cathedral series, these works reveal a deeper investigation of a singular “place” over time, offering a multitude of interpretations.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Liz Nielsen (American, b. 1975) ​studied Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she received her B.F.A., and later earned her M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2004. Nielsen has exhibited extensively throughout the world, including upcoming and recent solo exhibitions at Black Box Projects, London; David Smith Gallery, Denver; Schalter Gallery, Berlin and Danziger Gallery, New York, as well many group exhibitions including David Zwirner Gallery, New York, Rawson Projects, New York, and Angell Gallery, Toronto in conjunction with the CONTACT Photography Festival. Her work will also be featured in Photo London and the Photographer’s Gallery in Spring 2018. Nielsen’s work has been reviewed in the New Yorker, New York Times, London Financial Times, Artslant, Hyperallergic, and The Wall Street Journal. She is the co-owner of the Elijah Wheat Showroom, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.