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. In intimate, 12 x 12 inch LP size works to 40 x 40 inch portrait-size paintings, Nielsen achieves near-photographic detail from the tightly controlled squeegees he uses to lay down the paint.
Oil thinner and thickener help create peaks and valleys on super-flat Masonite or canvas stretched over board. The eyes undulate and pulse along translucent edges and scalloped shadows, Nielsen’s color choices recall the fantastic, nostalgic, and exotic: radioactive lemon-orange Forbidden Planet dust; Dead Sea foam, and Chinese pomegranate liqueur. The three-dimensional effect is quasi-sculptural.
In Nielsen’s work, it appears as though the painting process itself has been captured without the hand of the maker. The mind does a double take at this (seemingly) immaculately conceived object, all the while trying to assign a name to what it thinks it sees in Nielsen’s forms. This work pushes us to make meaning of the forms we see, until language itself fails us. The literal and the conceptual are almost interchangeable, but the image refuses to settle neatly in either category. On one level we inevitably demand and create language to describe what we’re seeing, but on another, the experience of seeing Nielsen’s paintings is a wordless, purely perceptual one.
Excerpted from a profile published in access+ENGAGE. Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine at mnartists.org/accessengage.
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