When Nellie King Solomon moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2019, it was a loss to the Bay Area art community.  The Fourth Wall is proud to welcome her back to the Bay Area temporarily with a show that features works exhibited for the first time together, treasured works held deep back in the archives and fresh works made in the last two months.

Nellie King Solomon's art practice establishes rules, grids, and frameworks, only to challenge their very existence. King Solomon approaches painting with equal parts irreverence and admiration. She paints on the sharp industrial material of Mylar with custom wood, glass, and rubber tools pulling paint in sweeping gestural marks. The Mylar mounted to aluminum makes for a clean architectonic finish. 

Iconic, abstract elements and unusual technical materials reveal the tension between rigor and spontaneity as the artist keeps both a critical and playful eye on the process of painting. King Solomon’s work centers around fluidity and movement, using her history as a surfer, swimmer, and dancer, she continually experiences her body in relation to space. The artist’s work typically features expansive, repeated gestures that allow an organic process to unfold as the artist moves alongside her medium. Increasingly, she paints to serve a higher order - paintings as portals between the physical and the ethereal worlds. Paintings to make evident a site where the soul permeates matter. King Solomon chases magic. 

Nellie King Solomon states, "In this latest New Narrative 2024 series between cloud bursts of fluorescent glistening smog, in the cracks of the negative spaces, I delicately ink our vehicles to access the wilderness of our mind's eye. I draw up between the clouds our freeways, fist full of cash, Giotto’s Angels, Barbar’s Espoir, our 747, all that transports us into the wilds we seek, since our fleshy little bodies alone cannot get us there. These are works of California, Driving, Flying, Wildernesses; within us, without us & into the After Life."  

We are so pleased that Bay Area art patron, Lorna Meyer, lent her aesthetic expertise to  curate this show.  Lorna has been a major force in Bay Area arts for over 30 years; she serves as President of the Foundation of the Fine Arts Museums (de Young and Legion of Honor), Chair of the Board of Directors of California College of the Arts (CCA), and  President of the SF Advocacy for the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington DC.   She has collected Bay Area and contemporary art for decades.  The Fourth Wall is grateful for her creative contribution to this important show.