Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition NICHOLAS NIXON: Recent Work from September 9 through October 30, 2004.
Nicholas Nixon’s recent work is a return to a subject he first photographed in the mid 1970s, the city view, specifically that of Boston and New York. These images of the vast city landscape, at once both ordered and chaotic, were shown at one of the most influential exhibitions of the seventies, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape at the George Eastman House.
Today, with the presence of the “Big Dig” project and rapid urban expansion outwards and upwards, Nixon has found new issues to photograph in the Boston city view. Unlike his earlier images, the new photographs are not landscapes in the traditional sense as they are often devoid of the natural elements of earth, scenery, and sky. In Cutaway View of Expressway, Boston, buildings rise out of car-lined freeways suspended above train tracks forming complex levels of a city that resemble the layers of the earth’s crust.
The images, incredibly sharp at all depths, have been made with an 8 x 10 camera. By using this camera none of the image’s information or tonal richness is lost. This clarity creates the illusion of being able to see more than the eye could see if you were there, such as the detail of the American flag that hangs on the wall of a cubicle in an office building in View of State Street Bank, Boston.
Nixon has received three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as two Guggenheim Fellowships. His work is included in many important collections including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art among others.
NICHOLAS NIXON: Recent Work is presented concurrently with the exhibition SOL LEWITT: New Wall Drawings and Photographs whose intense chromatic complexity parallels the complicated levels of Nixon’s city views.
