MARGARET NIELSEN: LOVE STORIES/SHORT STORIES

Margaret Nielsen Love Stories/Short Stories

Cirrus 2014

Margaret Nielsen Love Stories/Short Stories

September 13 - October 25, 2014 Opening reception: September 13, 6 -8 pm Cirrus Gallery 542 S. Alameda St. Los Angeles, CA 90013

Cirrus 2014

Margaret Nielsen

By Bill Hackman

“When I enter the world of dreams I am deconstructed, as I am transformed from the one who holds the internal world in my mind to the one who is experientially inside the dramaturgy. Gathered and processed by the dream space and dream events I live in a place where I seem to have been held before: inside the magical and erotic embrace of a forming intelligence that bears me.”

—Christopher Bollas, Being a Character Margaret Nielsen’s paintings document a dreamscape of desire and foreboding. Assaying these curious scenes, we find ourselves immersed in the dramaturgy of psychic life, as the psychoanalyst Cristopher Bollas put it, where the self is scattered among an ensemble cast to act out the secret drama of being. We enter dreams in medias res, seldom asking how we got here. Endings, too, are often obscure. What remains when we awake are images and events, snippets of conversation, brief encounters, and emotional states. Nielsen’s paintings are equally elusive, always out of context; backgrounds are frequently nothing more than moods, blacks and blues as dark as night and applied with seeming haste. Yet Nielsen’s images evoke the “magical and erotic

embrace” of an intelligence at once foreign yet familiar, a place that for all its strangeness feels nonetheless like home.

There is trouble in Nielsen’s paradise.

A childlike wonder at the marvels of nature is shadowed by the cruel certainty of the law of the jungle.

Take Sighting and Lure, paintings of nearly identical scenes. In each, a bird is drawn to its own reflection, seduced by its imaginary double.

The myth of Narcissus comes immediately to mind, particularly in Sighting, where water once again serves as the seductive surface. The innocent approaches, called forth by the apparition, hoping perhaps for a life sustaining drink, but blind to the threat of its own extinction. Indeed, it’s not altogether clear to the viewer what the outstretched hand in either painting will do, but the signs of menace seem hard to mistake. A lure, after all, is most often an invitation to entrapment. (We’ll leave aside any stray thoughts about the sexual overtones of the adage, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”)

Nielsen raises the psychological stakes of this dilemma in Double Bind, with its twinned birds ensnared in a pearl necklace (another kind of lure) and fighting to get free. The double, a mere

Sighting, 1997 Oil on panel, 14” x11”

Lure, 1997 Oil on panel, 11” x 14”

reflection in the first two paintings, has now passed through the looking glass and taken up residence in the same dimension as its “original.” It is this paradox of a divided self that lends Nielsen’s work its anxious, even at times uncanny, effects.

The struggle between the conjoined birds is equally at the heart of Interloper, in which a man wrestles with a large snake.

We recall for a moment the fateful story of Adam and Eve. But this is no Garden of Eden, as a closer look readily confirms: there is no apple and no Eve, and the illuminated dwelling in the background is a detail certainly not mentioned in the Book of Genesis. We are left, then, with a question: Who is the interloper?

Or, to turn it around, Who is at home here? Better still, in light of our nocturnal wanderings through this particular land of enchantment: Who has conjured whom?

Who is the dreamer, and who is the dreamed?

The answer, of course, is that all of us are both. For this is a looking-glass world in more ways than one. In the theater of the unconscious, you are the author, the actor, and the director, to say nothing of the attentive audience absorbed in the unfolding performance. As for the critic (or, for that matter, the essayist)—the objective, knowing self who stands apart, observing intently, reasoning precisely, and appraising judiciously—could he find a double more befitting than the man with the binoculars? We encounter him in Witness, as he peers through his magnifying lens at. . . . Well, at what exactly? He’s a bird-watcher who fails to notice the avian visitor perched upon his glass, a stargazer with his back to the glittering night sky. Perhaps he is a hunter

stalking his prey. And now it becomes clear: This inveterate observer has spied his double, and it is you.

It may be helpful here to recall Freud’s essay “The Uncanny,” an interpretation of the E.T.A. Hoffmann story, “The Sandman.” The story’s protagonist is haunted by his childhood memories of an evil “Sandman” who plucks out children’s eyes and substitutes burning coals. A turing point comes when the protagonist, now an adult, peers through a telescope at an automaton, a mechanical doll he mistakes for a living girl. When her artificial eyes are removed, he goes mad and cries out, “Faster—faster—faster— rings of fire—rings of fire! Whirl about, rings of fire—round and round! Wooden doll, ho! lovely wooden doll, whirl about—. . . .” The living doll is nothing of the sort; she is inanimate, soulless, uncanny, a reminder of one’s own fate; she is the sight of death looking us in the eye.

Interloper, 1984 Oil on panel, framed, 4” x 5”

Double Bind, 1997 Oil on panel, 11” x 9”

Fire Fly, 1997 Oil on panel, 11” x 14”

Decoy, 1997 Oil on panel, 14” x 11”

Consider in this light Decoy and Fire Fly. A decoy is a kind of wooden doll, one intended to deceive the living ducks and lure them into the hunter’s sights.

Nielsen’s decoy provides a serene surface appearance that hides the haunted figure submerged in the depths of the unconscious. As for Fire Fly, compare it to its close cousins, Sighting and Lure.

The hypnotic doubles in those pictures have vanished; this bird is bedazzled by a flame. Reflection has burst into flame, and he spark of desire may portend an all-consuming fire. In witnessin ourselves reflected in the sight of death. We too will be consumed by fire, reduced to ash, scattered to the sea or sky. Alternatively, Nielsen has thoughtfully provided funeral urns, so our charred remains might be preserved, one more specimen for the universal Witness to add to his collection.

That Nielsen has borrowed her symbolic vocabulary from nature—her menagerie of fish, snakes, and above all birds—is no accident. The psychic field may be filled with unconscious projections, but the objects that populate it have their origins in the real. And surely one of

her recurring themes is a natural world threatened by the careless human interloper who, able to see nothing but his own reflection, destroys habitat, endangers species, and winds up trapped in a soulless world of his own making.

Fortunately, neither water nor fire is solely a harbinger of death and destruction in Nielsen’s work; water is also the source of life, a font of inspiration and creativity, as she makes plain in Entrance, with its cosmic jumping fish headed upstream to spawn in the Milky Way. Likewise, we might see in Fire Fly the all-consuming passion of erotic love and the free flight of the imagination, the ecstatic release of the spirit from all that has weighed it down.

We awake each day as someone new, transformed by dreams and, as Bollas puts it, by the “intense ghosts who. . . inhabit the human mind.”

Witness, 2004 Oil on panel, 14” x 11”

Entrance, 2002 Oil on panel, 12” x 9”

Installation views of Love Stories/Short Stories

Intervention, 1986 Oil on panel, 4” x 5”

Solitaire, 1986 Oil on panel, 5” x 4”

Bird on a Wire, 1997 Oil on panel, 11” x 14”

Communion, 1984 Oil on panel, 5” x 4”

Pecker Head, 1997 Oil on panel, 14” x 11”

Opening reception, September 13th, 2014

Leda and the Swan, 1997 Oil on panel, 14� x 11�

Taken in Hand, 1997 Oil on panel, 10” x 8”

Odyssey, 1984 Oil on panel, 5” x 4”

Installation views of Love Stories/Short Stories

Opening reception, September 13th, 2014

Tete a Tete I, 2006 Mixed media on porcelain urn, 8” x 12” x 8”

Tete a Tete II, 2006 Mixed media on porcelain urn, 8” x 12” x 8”

Game Plan, 2006 Mixed media on porcelain urn, 8” x 12” x 8”

Margaret Nielsen: Love Stories/Short Stories

“Interloper”, 1984 Oil on panel, framed 4” x 5” $3000

“Fire Fly”, 1997 Oil on panel 11” x 14” $6000

“Leda and the Swan”, 1997 Oil on panel 9” x 12” $6000

“Communion”, 1984 Oil on panel 5” x 4” $2500

“Witness”, 2004 Oil on panel 14” x 11” $6000

“Solitaire”, 1986 Oil on panel 5” x 4” $2500

“Bird on a Wire”, 1997 Oil on panel 11” x 14” $6000

“Sighting”, 1997 Oil on panel 11”x 14” $6000

“Lure”, 1997 Oil on panel 11” x 14” $6000

“Intervention”, 1986 Oil on panel 4” x 5” $2500

“Decoy”, 1997 Oil on panel 14” x 11” $6000

“Double Bind”, 1997 Oil on panel 12” x 9” $6000

“Taken in Hand”, 1997 Oil on panel 10” x 8” $5000

“Odyssey”, 1984 Oil on panel, framed 5” x 4” $3000

“Tete a Tete I”, 2006 Mixed media on porcelain urn 8” x 12” x 8” $2000

“Pecker Head”, 1997 Oil on panel 14” x 11” $6000

“Game Plan”, 2006 Mixed media on porcelain urn 8” x 12” x 8” $2000

“Tete a Tete II”, 2006 Mixed media on porcelain urn 8” x 12” x 8” $2000

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Margaret Nielsen Born:

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Education:

Chouinard Art School, Los Angeles, CA BFA, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA MA, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA

Selected Solo Exhibitions 2011

“States of Mind” Samuel Freeman, Santa Monica CA

2008

“Collection” Samuel Freeman, Santa Monica CA

2006

“Here Today…” Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica CA

2004

Davis & Cline Galleries, Ashland, OR

2003

Bakersfield Museum of Art, Paintings – A Survey, Bakersfield, CA

2003

Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

2000

Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

1997

Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

1995

Santa Monica Museum of Art – 25-Year Retrospective (Catalog), Santa Monica, CA

1993

Idiosyncratic Landscapes, Artists Space, New York, NY

1992

AsherFaure/Muse, Los Angeles, CA

1991

AsherFaure, Los Angeles, CA

1989

Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA

1988

AsherFaure, Los Angeles, CA

1986

AsherFaure, Los Angeles, CA

1984

East End Gallery, Provincetown, MA

AsherFaure, Los Angeles, CA

1980 1977

Wordworks Gallery, San Jose, CA Space Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1976

Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

1974

Mount San Antonio College, Walnut, CA

1972

California State University, Los Angeles, CA

Selected Group Exhibitions 2007

“Women Artist of California Then and Now” Track 16 Gallery Santa Monica, CA (catalog)

2006

“Multiple Vantage Points! Southern California Women Artist, 19802006” Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Park (catalog)

2006

“In Likeness” Hunsaker/Schlesinger Gallery San Monica Ca.

2005

“Contemporary Soliloquies on the Natural World” USC Fisher Gallery, University of South California, Los Angeles CA (catalog)

2004 University

“Mark Making”, Schneider Museum of Art, Southern Oregon

2004

“Summer Camp”, Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

2004

“Elemental Sources”, Mendocino College, Ukiah, CA

2004 University

“Shakespeare as Muse”, Schneider Museum of Art, Southern Oregon

2004

“Art in Windows”, Pasadena Art Alliance, Pasadena, CA

2002

“Daily Terrors”. Art Institute, College of Santa Fe

2001

Spokane Falls Community College

1999 “Water.” Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC (catalog)

Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL 1998

Nevada Institute of Contemporary Art, Group Show, Las Vegas, NV

Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI

1996

“16 Artists”, Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, CA “Acquiring Minds: Contemporary Art in Santa Barbara Collections”.

Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Forum, CA

1995

“Las Vegas or Bust!”. Nevada Institute of Contemporary Art, Las Vegas, NV

1994

The Art Cup, (Organized by Betty Asher.) Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles, CA ‘Beyond Appearance’. Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA (catalog). Travels in 1995 to Oakland College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA

1993 Menagerie. O’Melveny & Meyers, Los Angeles, CA and Hines Interests, San Francisco, CA 1991

The Spiritual Landscape. Biota Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Mind and Beast: Contemporary Artists and the Animal Kingdom.

Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin, curated

by Thomas H. Garaver. Travels to: Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX; Knoxville, Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; Canton Art Institute, Canton,

OH; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN (catalog).

Personal Mythologies, Marc Richards Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Hats and Headgear, San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, CA

Edge of Night, Muckenthaler Cultural Center, Fullerton, CA

Tokyo Mental Map, Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, Tokyo, Japan

1990

Ginza Gallery Nakazawa, Tokyo, Japan.

1989

Ginza Gallery Nakazawa, Tokyo, Japan.

Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, Tokyo, Japan.

1988

Selections from the Berkus Collection, Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA

1987

Under Currents: An Exhibition of West Coast Artists, Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Portland, OR

Present Perspectives: 1975-85, Fresno Arts Center and Museum, Fresno, CA

Visionary Landscape, The Woman’s Building, Los Angeles, CA

Perpetual Motion, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA (15 year survey, catalog).

1986

Artificial Paradise, AsherFaure, Los Angeles, CA

Beyond the Real, Prichard Art Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 1985

New Directions, California Printing. Visual Arts Center of Alaska,

Anchorage, AL (catalog).

1984

The Palm Tree, Arco Center of Visual Arts, Los Angeles, CA (catalog).

Critics Choice, Downtown TransAmerica Center, Los Angeles, CA

New Work, AsherFaure, Los Angeles, CA

1983

The 38th Corcoran Biennial Exhibition of American Painting, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Lakeview Museum of Art and Sciences, Peoria, IL; The Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale, AZ; The Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (catalog)

Margaret Nielsen/Kathryn Halbower, AsherFaure, Los Angeles, CA

Environs 1: Traction Street, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, CA

Monoprints, Art Space Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Downtown L.A. Between the Freeways, Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA

1982

Los Angeles, Spark Gallery, Denver, CO

Margaret Nielsen/Kathryn Halbower, Middendorf-Lane Gallery, Washington D.C.

Microcosms from California, Siegel Contemporary Art, New York, NY; Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA (catalog)

Betty Asher’s Cups, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA; Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA

Billy Al Bengston, Margaret Nielsen, Wayne Thiebaud, Sun Valley

1981

Center for the Arts, Sun Valley, ID. Natasha Nicholson/Margaret Nielsen, AsherFaure, Los Angeles, CA

Downtown Los Angeles, Madison Art Center, Madison WI; Center for the Visual Arts, Normal, IL; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Nickel Art Museum, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Humor in Art, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

California Dreamin’, Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1980

Southern California Drawing, University of Hartford, Hartford, CT

Furnishings by Artists, Otis Art Institute/Parsons School of Design, Los Angeles, CA

In a Major and Minor Scale, Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1979

Los Angeles City Mayor’s Office.

Premiere Festival International De La Carte Postal D’Avant Garde, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Palais du Louvre, Paris; Libraire-Galerie du Luxemburg, Paris; Galerie La Lampe dans I’Horloge, Paris; Musee d’Art Modern de Bologne, Italy

Drawing, California State University, Dominguez Hills, CA

Happy Trails-A Western Round-Up, Security Pacific Plaza, Los Angeles, CA

Making it Safe, Santa Monica, CA

1978

Group Show, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles City CETA Grant-Art in Public Places, Van Nuys City Hall (Permanent installation)

Other Things Artists Make, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1977 Art Stories, Libra Gallery, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, CA

Group Show, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

Contemporary Miniatures, California State University, Los Angeles, CA (catalog)

Magical Mystery Tour, Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1976 Humor, Newport Harbor Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA

Magical Mystery Tour, Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

L.A. Louver Gallery, Venice, CA

1975 San Jose State University, San Jose, CA

AT&T Drawing Exhibition (traveling)

Prints on Broxton Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Women’s Exhibition, Aerospace, Los Angeles, CA

Drawing Exhibition, Janus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1974 Ellie Blankfort Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

24 From Los Angeles, New Works by Emerging Artists, Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1973 Inaugural Exhibition, Womanspace, Los Angeles, CA

Ellie Blankfort Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Drawing Exhibition, Womanspace, Los Angeles, CA

Salon R&R, Los Angeles, CA

La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA

1972 Los Angeles County Museum of Art – Art Rental Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1971 Long Beach Museum of Art Annual Exhibition, Long Beach, CA

Los Angeles County Museum of Art – Art Rental Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

SELECTED ARTICLES AND REVIEWS 2011 Mizota, Sharon Los Angeles Times May 20th “An Artist Unique Path” 2006 Pagel, David Los Angeles Times January 9th “Each to her own Nature” 1997 Pagel, David Los Angeles Times 1995 Jones, Amelia. “Margaret Nielsen, Santa Monica Museum of Art,”

ARTFORMUM, May 1995

McKenna, Kristine, “Painting to Save the Planet,” Los Angeles Times, February 21

Wilson, William. Los Angeles Times, March 16

Duncan, Michael, “Margaret Nielsen at Santa Monica Museum of Art,” Art in America, October 1995 1994 Wilson, William. “Ruminations on the Resistance to Nature. Los Angeles

Times, January 28 1991 Hackman, William. “Reframing the Landscape” L. A. Style, May

Geer, Suvan. “The Quirk Ethic” Los Angeles Times, June 14

1989 Goldbert, Beth. Artweek, October 28 1988 Muchnic, Suzanne. Los Angeles Times, September 9

Dubin, Zan. “It’s Art in Your Mind” Los Angeles Times, September 3

McCloud, Mac. “The Forest of Myth” Artweek, September 17

1987 Sindell, Judith. “Visions in the Land: Margaret Nielsen.” Visions, vol.1, no. 2, Spring 1987 1986 Ballatore, Sandy. L.A. Weekly, September 19-25

Gardner, Colin. Los Angeles Times, Part VI, September 19

Berland, Dinah. “Testaments to Primordial Wonders.” Artweek, September 27

California Magazine, vol. II, no. 9, September 1987

1985 Mallinson, Constance. Art in America, April 1985

Larsen, Susan C. Art in America, April 1985

1984 Wilson, William. Los Angeles Times, Part VI, December 7

Drohojowska, Hunter. L.A. Weekly, November 30

Schipper, Merle. Artweek, December 8

1983 Fleming, Lee. “The Corcoran Biennial.” ARTnews, vol. 82, no. 5, May 3

Muchnic, Suzanne. “Halbower and Nielsen: A Fortuitous Pairing.” Los Angeles Times, July 15

Richard, Paul. “The World of the West.” The Washington Post, February 2

1982 Lewis, Jo Ann. “California Artists.” The Washington Post, June 12

1981 Drohojowska, Hunter. Los Angeles Times, Part VI, September 25

“Pick of The Weekly.” L.A. Weekly, October 2

Muchnic, Suzanne, “Furnishing by Artists.” Los Angeles Times, June 25

Drohojowsha, Hunter. “Pick of the Week.” L.A. Weekly, June 14

Tyson, Janet. “Mystery & Adventure.” Artweek, April 12

1978 Wilson, William, “Magical Mystery Tour.” Los Angeles Times, December 17 Muchnic, Suzanne. “Artists Books.” Artweek, February 26 1977 Wilding, Faith. By Our Own Hands. Double XX Inc., p. 55

Burden, Barbara & Jeffrey Gubbins. Choke, vol. 1, no. 1, September, III

1976 Wortz, Melinda. “Anderson, Nielsen, Snyder.” Artweek, December 18

Askey, Ruth. “Magical Spaces by Sixteen Women.” Artweek, December 18

Wilson, William. “Magical Mystery Tour.” Los Angeles Times, December 20 1974 Wilson, William. “Empty Spaces in Empty Places.” Los Angeles Times, September 2 1972 Wilson, William. “Fantasy Art on View at Cal State L.A.” Los Angeles

Times, October 18 1971 “Long Beach Annual Exhibition.” ARTnews, January 1971 Awards 1987 National Endowment for the Arts 1980 Beaubourg Foundation Fellowship to Paris 1979 Los Angeles City CETA Grant for Art in Public Places Public Art Projects 2001 Paseo Colorado, Pasadena, CA – Mosaic Fountain 1995 Union Station Gateway, Metropolitan Transit 1994 Motion Picture Association of America, Mosaic Project, Encino, CA 1989 The Salt River Project, Phoenix, AZ. Public Collections

Sony Pictures Entertainment, Mural Project

Bank of America, San Francisco, CA

Atlantic Richfield Corporation, Los Angeles, CA

Madison Art Center, Madison, WI

United Bank of Denver, Denver, CO

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

Teaching Experience 1979-87 Otis Art Institute/Parsons School of Design, Los Angeles, CA 1985 Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, CA 1985 University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

College of Creative Studies, Santa Barbara, CA

1987-91 Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA

Copyright Cirrus Editions ltd. Š 2014

Cirrus 2014

cirrus editions ltd Š 2014