12.26, in conjunction with SoCo Gallery, is pleased to announce the opening of Electric Romance, a solo exhibition by artist Liz Nielsen. 

Liz Nielsen’s innovative practice upends the traditional method of analog photography. Working in the color darkroom, she exposes light sensitive paper and processes it through conventional photographic chemicals, creating “light-paintings” by way of camera-less photography. Her compositions of rich, liquid color become a record of the path of radiant energy as it moves over and through her works. Taking shapes from landforms, her photograms depict an evanescent moment of an unnamed place, giving rise to conversations of temporality, transformation, and the physical world.

Electric Romance reveals the invisible charged energy between two people in love. Nielsen parallels love to light in that both are tangible and intangible. We see light but we can’t touch it. We can feel love, like “weighted air”, but we can’t hold it. Recognizing that both of these things do not fit as either/ or, they rest outside of the concept of duality. They are both.

Influenced by traditional Japanese landscape photographers, Nielsen explores where the sky and the ground are given equal importance and weight. In the artists’ work the focus is on the space in between these two parts. Nielsen asks us: “Is the horizon line part of the top or the bottom? Or is it part of both or neither? Is it even there at all?" The landscapes themselves are non-locatable. They are combinations of two or more locations fused together in one time, as spaces, existing inter-dimensionally in the present. Additionally, the images themselves are created to lead us to experience the work from a mutable point of view. The landscapes are compositionally sound from several directions giving the viewer a perspective outside of a traditional gravity. The work can be viewed upside down and/or rightside up.

Nielsen’s quantum vision continues into the creation of the photographs. Her works are made by collapsing light waves into particles on paper, and the results present landscapes that are both somewhere and nowhere. What is presented inside the image is connected to what is outside the image. Everythingisentangled. Lovecannotbeexplained. Love is Love.

Nielsen also studied philosophy which today influences her work directly. She is endlessly curious about the meaning of life and the dimensions of existence. Working with light is connected to this. Light is a medium that has incredible power to shape space and to infuse emotion, as well as (for her) transcend time. She says “Light is one of the closest things we know to love as it can be felt but not held."

iz Nielsen (b. 1975, Wisconsin) Liz Nielsen is an experimental photographer based in both Brooklyn and Newburgh, NY. Her photographs are made without a camera and can also be described as light paintings. She works in the analogue color darkroom exposing light sensitive paper and processing it through traditional photographic chemicals. Each image is unique and ranges in size from 100" x 100" to 4" x 5". Liz has exhibited her work extensively including recent solo exhibitions in New York, London, Los Angeles and Paris. Her photograms have been featured at international art fairs such as Paris Photo, Photo London, and Unseen Amsterdam. Nielsen has been reviewed in Artforum, the New Yorker, the Guardian, the London Financial Times, LensCulture, Vogue UK, and FOAM magazine among others. 
 Recent solo exhibitions include Miles McEnery Gallery, NewYork, NY (forthcoming);“I Like to Imagine You’re in a Place Like This,” Over the Influence, Los Angeles, CA; “Rolling Aura,” David B. Smith, Denver, CO; “Spooky Action,” Art Austerlitz, Austerlitz, NY; “Triangle Moon,” SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC; “Small,” Black Box Projects, London, United Kingdom; “Entanglement,” Horizont Galeria, Budapest, Hungary; “The Arrival,” Black Box Projects, London, United Kingdom; “HotSpots,” Danziger Gallery, New York, N Y; Paul Smith Design (in collaboration with Black Box Projects), London, United Kingdom; “Tracing the Azimuth,” SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC; Unseen Amsterdam with Danziger Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Photo London with NextLevel Galerie, London, United Kingdom; NextLevel Galerie, Paris, France; Horizont Galeria, Budapest, Hungary, and “The Medium,” Danziger Gallery, New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include Untitled Art Fair with David B Smith Gallery, Miami, FL;“Who Really Cares?” (curated by Helen Toomer), Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY; Photo London with

Black Box Projects, London, United Kingdom; “Time Lapse,” Fridman Gallery, Beacon, NY; “Signs of Spring,” Black Box Projects, London, United Kingdom; “All Out / All In” (curated by Will Hutnick), Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; “Only Connect,” Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL; Landskrona Foto, Landskrona, Sweden; “Booth B4,” David B. Smith, Denver, CO; Photo London with Black Box Projects, London, United Kingdom; “Magic Edge” (curated by Michelle Tillou & Andy Cross), Troutbeck, Amenia, NY;“Coming Soon” (curated by Ryan Turley), Austerlitz Historical Society, Austerlitz, NY;“Color Lab” (curated by Melanie McClintock),Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar, Doha, Qatar; “Adorned,” McColl Center for Arts and Innovation, Charlotte, NC; “Empathy Fatigue,” Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, IL; Untitled Miami with Danziger. Nielsen received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL; her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and her Bachelor of Arts from Seattle University, Seattle,WA.