After studying at Columbia University in New York, Avery Z. Nelson graduated in 2009. In his painting, Avery Z. Nelson explores bodies as they edge, erupt, and expand. Colors and textures, curves and cuts, body parts melt to become landscapes and monuments to become mere individuals. The non-binary artist creates worlds where the singular contemporary person finds its multitude, its many selves.
Having witnessed the bitterness of isolation, here in their paintings, Avery Z. Nelson creates poetic spaces to hold the depth of mourning and becoming. Body parts fade in and out of colorfields, destined for decomposition, vibrating between stillness and motion, figuration and indeterminacy. For years, the trans artist has explored the body as it folds upon itself, the bending of a leg, an armpit, the meeting of the many layers of voluptuous fat, resting muscles, the body the fragments. Through the evolution of her body and her painting, Avery Z. Nelson has built a language of tension and release, of bodies moving, swinging, embracing; the dance floor; listening with every orifice of the body. Like the fantasy of writing a poem on a napkin in a crowded queer space, and feeling the gravity of the alienating world, and then feeling seen, held by this gathering of kindred strangers. Recently, Avery Z. Nelson has had several solo exhibitions, in Barcelona at the Galerie Nogueras Blanchard and in New York in 2023 at the Blade Study Gallery and the Rachel Uffner Gallery. Avery Z. Nelson’s work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions including Para Site (Hong Kong), Mrs. Gallery (Queens), Rachel Uffner (NYC) and the DePaul Art Museum (Chicago). His work has been featured and reviewed in several magazines including The Brooklyn Rail, Artforum, Artspace and Spike Magazine.