New York City - Jenkins Johnson Gallery announces a solo exhibition of photographer Lori Nix featuring her latest work, Shadows of the City, as well as work from previous series.  The photography of Lori Nix executes hyper-color scenes where catastrophes unfold.  Her images are morbidly fascinating and her twisted sense of humor highlights the comedic that can be found in the tragic.  In her new series, Shadows of the City, Nix constructs interior decay of buildings whose fate has been solemnly met.  On exhibition through 21 April, 2007.

Barren, urban landscapes unveil foretastes of what may come if man continues to exploit nature and fight her organic needs.  Via reckless abandonment of the clues and signs she is giving us, are we going to process in radio silence with only the aftermath left to speak for us?  Debris lays in wait in Nix’s constructs for time to incorporate them back into her composition.  Thus, she demonstrates in the end nature has the upper hand; a brute power that in these works has not yet been victorious, rather balances in the intermediate between persistence and ruin. She gives the viewer an incidental advantage by offering fenced in tragedies that inherently raise awareness and inspire reflection on our everyday actions and means of survival.

In this series as well as her previous, Accidentally Kansas, Insecta Magnifica, Some Other Place, and Lost, Nix emotes the clash between catastrophe and beauty to depict their codependence.  The confidence in her work is contagious, inquisitive, and ultimately caring and optimistic.  Works are not meant to show the downturn of humanity yielding to a gradual loss of all that gives meaning and joy to life, rather they are self-aware dissections of the species of warfare modern society is enabling.  By doing this with a sympathetic sense of humor, her voice rises through an adept manipulation of saturated color, lighting, and miniatures to produce wowing cinematic gestures.  Often as a witness and bystander you remind yourself these are dioramas whose scale is table-top because their effect is poignant.

Institutions of culture and commerce are replicated as theatrical sets whose stories lie before and after what we see.  What manifests is necessary escapism for the onlooker as they fill in the gaps for themselves – consciously or subconsciously – and permit one to diverge imagination however they choose.  We find our answers to what happened here according to individual means of digestion and spin stories out of her neon skies, sweeping and rising hills, vivid detail, and fresh attitude.  The lack of figures in this series makes it particularly easy to try on each realm, which Nix grants openly by maximizing her power of creation and instruments as a tool of discovery as well as pure fun.

In Shadows of the City, Nix has matured her craft and adopted an acute voice that rings out in contemporary society’s debates over environment, economy, government, policing, and the power of individuals.  Hers facilitates an examination into what may or may not be ridiculous about our fears and woes.  Via her scenarios, discussion is broad and tiptoeing not an option.  In the wrangle of discovery and acknowledgement, we do not see disorder, rubbish, petulance, or constructs; rather, we find delicacy, balance, and spirit. Nix has the extraordinary ability to physically interpret notions of stand-by and emergency in a hand that is concise and unafraid.  Her spatial tightness is not a product of jerry-rig, rather one of mature craft.  She arms her viewer with lightness in the face of terror instead of causing them to stare and stew in warped, isolated depression because the world has gone dark. Piercing into the core of fear, Nix interprets who, what, where, when, and why without the crutch of grotesque or melodramatic shock value.  Her images are strong because she is an artist that delights and suspends before us fantasy of her own without being narcissistic.

Lori Nix has received the honor of the NYFA Individual Artist Grant; Light Work Artist-In-Residence, Syracuse NY; Artist in the Marketplace, The Bronx Museum; Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant Recipient; and the Greater Columbus Art Council Individual Artist Grant Recipient. She has been published in Oprah Magazine, Harpers, Art New England, Artlies, Popular Photography, Dwell, Contact Sheet, Camera Arts, The New York Times, Spot, Sheet, and Time Out among others. Moreover, Nix’s work is held in the permanent collections of: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, Texas.

Visit Jenkins Johnson Gallery at : www.jenkinsjohnsongallery.com