Joan Nelson
September 8–October 14, 2017

Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce a solo exhibition with the artist Joan Nelson opening September 8 and on view at the gallery through October 14.

Well-known for her paintings that incorporate multiple pictorial landscape traditions and pay homage to and borrow from the long lineage of artists depicting the natural world, including Albert Bierstadt and Caspar David Friedrich, Nelson creates hybrid landscapes that depict real and imagined places. While her works, to date, have occupied a unique place in the history of male-dominated landscape painting, one that is distinctly female and revisionist, the artist's new series of small paintings on paper, all made in 2017, take a different critical turn.

Created with a range of materials including ink, pencil, spray paint, acrylic and mascara, the works could be described broadly as depicting the end of the world: interior landscapes inaccessible to all but the individual; inhospitable or remote places that are unmarked by human activity; or post-apocalyptic terrain where everything is dead. With evocative vistas that are beautiful, but barren, Nelson's unfamiliar places, unmoored from the map, are hazy, shifting and displaced. Their small scale conflicts with their broad panoramas, where one scans for any sign of life and their epic beauty tempers an uneasiness or terror that pervades each surface. As the natural world is under direct and continued assault, Nelson's paintings are relevant, now more than ever.

Inspired very much by the writings of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th Century German naturalist and explorer who posited a connection between human activity and changes in the climate, Nelson also expresses her observations in a highly poetic way. With the full force of her painterly capacity and technical mastery, Nelson creates a sense of awe for and connectedness with nature. As Humboldt writes, “Everything is interaction and reciprocal.”

Joan Nelson (b. 1958, California) lives and works in upstate New York. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Minneapolis Museum of Art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

installation view: Joan Nelson


installation view: Joan Nelson


installation view: Joan Nelson


installation view: Joan Nelson


installation view: Joan Nelson


installation view: Joan Nelson


installation view: Joan Nelson


installation view: Joan Nelson


installation view: Joan Nelson


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, pencil and mascara on paper
13 3/4 x 13 1/2 inches
JN_WOP_14


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink and pencil on paper
13 3/4 x 13 1/2 inches
JN_WOP_15


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, spray paint, pencil, Cassel earth pigment and iridescent powder on paper
7 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches
JN_WOP_17


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, spray paint, pencil and Cassel earth pigment on paper
7 x 7 inches
JN_WOP_18


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, spray paint, pencil, Cassel earth pigment and iridescent powder on paper
8 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches
JN_WOP_23


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, spray paint, pencil, Cassel earth pigment and iridescent powder on paper
17 3/4 x 18 inches
JN_WOP_24


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, pencil and marker on paper
13 3/4 x 13 1/2 inches
JN_WOP_28


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, spray paint, marker, pencil and mascara on paper
15 3/4 x 15 1/2 inches
JN_WOP_32


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, spray paint, pencil and marker on paper
13 3/4 x 13 1/2 inches
JN_WOP_35


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, pencil and mascara on paper
13 3/4 x 13 1/2 inches
JN_WOP_37


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, marker, pencil and mascara on paper
13 3/4 x 13 1/2 inches
JN_WOP_39


Joan Nelson
Untitled, 2017
acrylic, ink, pencil and mascara on paper
13 3/4 x 13 1/2 inches
JN_WOP_42