untitled 2007

untitled 2007

oi on canvas, 30"x 30"

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Christian Nielsen’s paintings exist in the optic pleasure zone between literal and abstract expression. Their imperfectly repeating patterns and three-dimensional colors are familiar, yet alien. They subtly psychedelicize the windowpane geometries of Malevich and color interactions of Albers with an op-art emphasis on contrast. The scale ranges from the intimate, almost LP cover-size of 12”x12” to 40”x40”, portrait-size work which is suitable for meditation and rapture without nod.

Astonishing near-photographic details trail from the tightly controlled squeegees Nielsen uses to lay down the paint. No more than two layers of oils, with one color on each, are ever used. These self-imposed binary limits exponentially build their optical fervor. The eyes undulate and pulse along translucent edges and scalloped shadows. Oil thinner and thickener help create peaks and valleys on super-flat Masonite or canvas stretched over board. These pieces bear no titles, just exploration that roams to fill the plane, working its void.

Nielsen’s color choices recall the fantastic, nostalgic, and exotic: radioactive lemon-orange Forbidden Planet dust; past-date Dead Sea foam flat and Chinese pomegranate liquors. The resonance these colors spark from their gaseous, geographic, and mechanical architecture is quasi-sculptural.

It sometimes appears as though the process that brings the work into being has, itself, been captured as the painting, without the hand of the maker. This perception, in which the process of making becomes the artistic object of the work, is especially evident in the images which appear to depict the unraveled paper rolls. The mind does a double take at this (seemingly) immaculately conceived object. It is a truly po-mo satisfaction: a Möbius strip of image and referent going from without to within and back, ad infinitum. Like the way it is possible to see faces in most anything, we all have an innate ability to switch between abstraction and object, thought and perception. The pieces which fully take advantage of this ability make for the most readily appealing work: a painting with a ground of cocoa overlaid with a snow-powder white resembles a landscape of alpine drifts after dusk. However Nielsen does not wish to dwell in such pictorial-referential literality; instead, he exploits its inevitability beautifully and moves again to pure pattern.
--Excerpted from Sean Smuda's related article on Christian Nielsen's tricky, gorgeous body of work, "Interzone: The Paintings of Christian Nielsen."

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• untitled 2007, christian nielsen
• 10,000 Arts: ZOOM IN Christian Nielsen, Essay by Sean Smuda
• untitled 2007, christian nielsen
• untitled 2007, christian nielsen
• untitled 2007, christian nielsen
• untitled 2007, christian nielsen
• untitled 2007, christian nielsen
• untitled 2007, christian nielsen
• untitled 2007, christian nielsen
• untitled 2007, christian nielsen
• nielsen, christian, christian nielsen
• untitled 2007, christian nielsen