The Cleve Carney Art Gallery, located at the McAninch Arts Center, 425 Fawell Blvd., at College of DuPage, presents “Zoe Nelson: Recto / Verso,” Oct. 18 – Nov. 21. The opening reception will take place Sunday, Oct. 18, 5 – 8 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

For this solo show, Nelson has transformed the Cleve Carney Art Gallery into a shifting landscape of pulsating and vibrant paintings that embraces a plurality of holes, simultaneity of sides and folds, and chromatic movement. Selections for this exhibition are from a body of Nelson’s work from 2015 and will consist of more than 10 large-scale, double-sided paintings including “Folding into Triangle,” “Touching” and “Psychedelic Psychic,” among others.

Sometimes violently, other times sensually, and often playfully, Nelson slices into the canvas in order to open up her paintings. Formal frameworks of absence and negation are paired with exuberant colors and playfully immersive surfaces of paint. Nelson paints on all sides of the canvas and her paintings will hang from the ceiling or perpendicular to the wall, dancing with the viewer as one moves throughout the gallery, inviting expansive, individual and temporal possibilities of viewing. The effect is a reversible painting installation, where no single angle looks the same, and each work contains its own logic of dissonance or harmony between recto and verso sides.

Zoe Nelson was born in Rhinebeck, N.Y. She received an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Barnard College. Exhibitions in Chicago include Western Exhibitions (solo), Lloyd Dobler Gallery (solo), Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center (two-person), Robert Bills Contemporary, and Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts. Other exhibitions include the Elder Gallery (Lincoln, Neb.), Usable Space (Milwaukee), NurtureART (NYC), and The Fisher Landau Center for Art (NYC). Nelson’s work was selected for the 2013 and 2011 Midwest editions of New American Paintings. She has attended residencies through ACRE (Wisc.), Ox-Bow (Mich.), The Lighthouse Works (Fishers Island, N.Y.), Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art (France) and Yale University’s Norfolk Summer Program (Conn.). This past spring, she presented her work as part of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Artists Now! public lecture series. Nelson currently resides in Chicago and teaches at Chicago’s Harold Washington College and DePaul University.

In response to Nelson’s work, the Leopold Group, a Chicago-based modern dance company, will perform “A Hole Piece,” a collaboration with dancers of the Leopold Group and choreographer/artistic director Lizzie Leopold. Performances are Sunday, Oct. 18, 6:30 p.m. (excerpted 20-minute performance, in conjunction with the exhibition opening reception), and Saturday, Nov. 7 and Saturday, Nov. 14, 1 p.m. (full 45 minute performances). There will also be an Artist Talk: Saturday, Nov. 7, 12 p.m. All of these events are free and open to the public.

Cleve Carney Art Gallery presents “Zoe Nelson: Recto / Verso,” Oct. 18 to Nov. 21. The opening reception is Sunday Oct. 18, 5 to 8 p.m. The exhibition may also be viewed during regular gallery hours: Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m., Thursday 6 – 8 p.m. and Saturday 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. Cleve Carney Art Gallery is also open one hour prior to MAC performances held in the Belushi Performance Hall and during intermission. For more information about the exhibitions and related special events, visit cod.edu/gallery or call 630.942.2321.

Also on display in the MAC’s lobby, now through Nov. 21: “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend.” This exhibition of quilts by the artists of Gee’s Bend, Alabama can be viewed during building hours Monday through Sunday, 6 a.m. – 11 p.m.

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Tags: Cleve Carney Gallery, Glen Ellyn, Zoe Nelson