ELIZABETH NEEL

Her new large-scale gestural paintings are built up through layers of acrylic paint on canvas weaving transparent and opaque streams of liquid through negative space. She juxtaposes hard and soft edges with a lexicon of marks including swipes, stuttering printed passages and brushed linear pathways that act as a physical transcription of the mind processing ideas, objects, and events. Positive and negative interplay in her works creating a constant between the illusion of a distance and proximity to stir the attention of the viewer, who reacts directly to the composition while simultaneously contemplating the suggestion of narrative and subject.

Neel’s works are directly related to the form and capability of the body. They are traces and records of her specific person, as well as voluntary acts of choreography and negotiation in response to external forces of entropy. Furthermore her works reference bodily fluids, bilateral symmetries, and a tension between vertical and horizontal in relation to gravity, suggesting multiple and simultaneous states of being. Collectively her actions and reactions challenge the physical and intellectual world of the viewer concerning the possibilities of the alive and the dead, the real and the imagined, the known and the unknown.

Neel’s new paintings on paper retain similar physical characteristics as her larger works while capitalising on an intimacy of scale and the potential of paper to highlight a pulled, printed and collaged form of touch that is both brazen and fragile.

Elizabeth Neel (b. 1975) lives and works in New York. She graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in 2007. Recent solo exhibitions include: Lobster with Shell Game, Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles (2015); The People, the Park, the Ornament, Pilar Corrias, London (2014); 3 and 4 before 2 and 5, Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York (2013); Routes and Pleasures, Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles (2012); Sphinx Ditch, Pilar Corrias, London (2011); Leopard Complex, Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York (2011); Stick Season, curated by Fionn Meade at SculptureCenter, New York (2010). Recent group exhibitions include: Performing Time, Leo Xu Projects, Shanghai (2016); Paradigm Store, Howick Place, London (2014); Speaking Through Paint, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York (2014); I Mean Orange, STUDIOLO, Zurich (2012); Modern Talking, curated by Nicola Trezzi, Cluj Museum, Cluji-Napoca (2012); Painting overall, Prague Biennale 5 (2011); Going Where the Weather Suits My Cloths – A fall of light on fabric, Mother’s Tank Station, Dublin (2011)