Fugue | Stuart Nielsen

Fugue is an intimate survey that celebrates five decades of the artist’s career, bringing together primarily unexhibited works exemplary of five central motifs within the artist’s dynamic vocabulary. Whether in singular or combined use, from small to large scale, and across media in drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture – we experience the harlequin pattern, the number seven, stacked circles, the human hand, and the muse or angel. The foundation of each works’ becoming is the artist’s honed relationship to the properties and potentials of color and matter in space and time. A rigorous, inquiring, and polyphonic practice comes through, with felt inspirations from the natural world’s geometry and repetition, research-based sciences across fields of knowledge, and importantly, the interior, subconscious and unknown realms.

About the Artist:
Born in 1947 in Evanston, IL, Nielsen grew up in Minneapolis, MN. He earned his BFA from the University of Minnesota in the late 1960s. Working within the movements of his time including Post-Painterly Abstraction and Pattern and Decoration, select early exhibitions include the Whitney Biennale (1975), the inaugural exhibition at Minneapolis’ pioneering Glen Hanson Gallery (1978), Artist + Printer, Walker Art Center (1980), and Decorative Abstractions, Minneapolis Institute of Art (1981). For the next twenty years, Nielsen pursued a career in large-scale, public and private site-specific commissions. His solo exhibition, Crucible, at the Weisman Art Museum highlighted one such commission by the University of Minnesota. Since the early 2000s, he returned to an intimate and highly experimental studio practice, exhibiting in the important survey, Abstract Painting in Minnesota, Rochester Art Center, alongside George Morrison, Clarence Morgan, and Phyllis Weiner (2004). Other select group exhibitions include at Minnesota Museum of American Art and Form + Content Gallery, St. Paul; Milwaukee Art Center; and Denver Art Museum. Select honors include a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship; two Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships, and as Highpoint Edition Artist, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis. Nielsen's work is collected by numerous public and private institutions including General Mills, Franconia Sculpture Park, IBM, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Plains Art Museum, Target Corporation, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Walker Art Center, and Weisman Art Museum.

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday through Saturday, Noon to 5:00 pm

Image: Stuart Nielsen, Untitled, 2024. Oil on canvas, 88 x 55 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery. Photo by Jerry Mathiason.