Lisa Nankivil

Meet the Artist

Video Profile: Interview with Lisa Nankivil in her studio

Artist Bio

Contemporary American artist Lisa Nankivil has established a national reputation for her luminous, richly textured abstract paintings. Inspired by the wide-ranging traditions of modernist abstraction, Nankivil has developed a distinctive style of painting that relies on the intricate layering of contrasting and complementary color and transparent glazes. Optical mixing heightens the dynamic visual effects of her canvases, inviting close inspection of the complex interplays of form, color, and light.

Nankivil trained in studio art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where she earned a BFA degree in painting in 1995. Nankivil has served as a Mentor in MCAD's Graduate MFA Program and is an artist-member of the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art, a prominent artist cooperative located in downtown Minneapolis, where she maintains her principal painting studio and private press.

Nankivil is represented by  Spanierman Modern, New York;   Marlborough Gallery-New York;  McCormick Gallery, Chicago; William Shearburn Gallery, St. Louis; and Highpoint Editions, Minneapolis. 

 On the paintings of Lisa Nankivil...

Grounded in the modernist tradition which sees pure color as a metaphor for the immaterial and the spiritual, Lisa Nankivil explores paint's ability to signify the essence of experience while leaving the representation of objects behind. In her stripe paintings Nankivil addresses the aesthetic problematic of the body's relationship to the horizontal and vertical. Her large horizontal compositions are soothing and inviting, as the basic verticality of the human body positions the viewer in a relation of dominance relative to their rippling expansive, recumbent forms.

Nankivil's vertical compositions confront the viewer with uplifting optical pathways that orient us toward ascent. Opaque and semi transparent ribbons of variegated color flicker and skip across the surfaces of Nankivil's canvases, flooding the senses with remarkably vivid associations and memories. These paintings communicate the idea of speed and movement; but more than anything they remind us of tastes, smells, and the feel of pleasurable things--orange toffee, rose petals, dark chocolate, pink wet skin, black velvet, blue sky bright with sun, melon, salty sea water and lavender gray dawn.

Patricia Briggs, Ph.D.

[Contributor to Artforum and New Art Examiner.]

Courtesy Patricia Briggs and Thomas McCormick Gallery.

SELECTED SOLO & GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2013

Curious Passions: The Diverse Inquiries of Traffic Zone Artists, Minnetonka Center for the Arts, Wayzata, Minn. 

Editions/Artists' Books Fair 2012 [Rescheduled from Nov. 2012], The Altman Building, New York, Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis)

2012

INK Miami Art Fair, Suites of Dorchester, Miami Beach, Fla., Marlborough Graphics (New York) 

IFPDA Print Fair, Park Avenue Armory, New York, Marlborough Graphics (New York) 

Lisa Nankivil: Recent Works, Spanierman Modern, New York 

Cleveland Fine Print Fair, Corporate College, Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis)

Fresh Abstraction, The Art Center, Highland Park, Ill.

Summer Selections, Spanierman Modern, New York

Gallery Selections: Paintings from the 1950s to the Present, Spanierman Modern, New York

Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints & New Editions, Baltimore Museum of Art, Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis)

Minneapolis Print & Drawing Fair, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Marlborough Graphics (New York)

McNay Print Fair, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas, Marlborough Graphics (New York)

Lisa Nankivil: New Monoprints, Traffic Zone Gallery, Minneapolis 

Fifteen Contemporary Artists, Spanierman Modern, New York

2011

Editions/Artists' Books Fair 2011, X Initiative, New York, Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis)

IFPDA Print Fair, Park Avenue Armory, New York, Marlborough Graphics (New York)

Lisa Nankivil: Flying Dreams, McCormick Gallery, Chicago 

Highpoint Editions—Decade One, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Lisa Nankivil: Lines of Inference, Spanierman Modern, New York

Art Chicago 2011, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

Minneapolis Print & Drawing Fair, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis) & Marlborough Graphics (New York)

Dallas Art Fair, William Shearburn Gallery (St. Louis)

New Prints 2010, Visual Arts Center, University of Texas at Austin; organized by IPCNY, New York

Time and Again, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

Gallery Selections, Spanierman Modern, New York

2010

Art Miami 2010, Art Miami Pavilion, Miami, Fla., McCormick Gallery (Chicago)

INK Miami Art Fair, Miami Beach, Fla., Marlborough Graphics (New York)

Editions/Artists' Books Fair 2010, X Initiative, New York, Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis)

IFPDA Print Fair, Park Avenue Armory, New York, William Shearburn Gallery (St. Louis)

New Prints 2010/Autumn, International Print Center New York (IPCNY), New York; travels to Visual Arts Center, University of Texas at Austin (Jan-Mar 2011)

Thirty Years of Collecting:  A Recent Gift to the Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Ariz.

Art Chicago 2010, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints & New Editions, Baltimore Museum of Art, Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis)

Sustainable Currents, Traffic Zone Gallery, Minneapolis

2009

Red Dot Art Fair, Midtown Miami Complex, Miami, Fla., Myers Contemporary (Annapolis, Md.)

Famously Private: New Work by Lisa Nankivil, Traffic Zone Gallery, Minneapolis

Editions/Artists' Books Fair 2009, X Initiative, New York, Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis)

Dirty Dozen, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

Halpert Biennial '09, Turchin Center for Visual Arts, Boone, N.C.

Art Chicago 2009, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

2008

Music & Art, Performance/concert series, Chelsea Art Museum, New York (11.19.08)

Editions/Artists' Books Fair 2008, The Tunnel, New York, Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis)

Highpoint Editions: Recent Publications, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis

Group Dialogue, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, N.M.

Lisa Nankivil: World's Edge, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

Abstraction: Summer 2008, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

Art Chicago 2008, McCormick Gallery (Chicago) & Highpoint Editions (Minneapolis)

2007-08

Out West: The Great American Landscape, Meridian International Center, Washington, D.C.; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Gallery of Sinkiang Academy of Arts, Urumqi; Shanxi Art Museum, Xi'an; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; Qingdao Modern Art Center, Qingdao; Guangzhou Museum of Fine Arts, Guangzhou; Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Center, Hong Kong; Dana Gallery, Missoula, Mont.

2007

Art Miami 2007, The Art Miami Pavilion, McCormick Gallery (Chicago)

Taizo Kuroda, Kumiko Namba, and Lisa Nankivil, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, N.M.

In the Zone, Traffic Zone Gallery, Minneapolis

Art Chicago 2007, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

2006

Spirited Expressions, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, N.M.

Emergence, Traffic Zone Gallery, Minneapolis

Spring Forward, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, N.M.

Art Chicago 2006, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

2005

Lisa Nankivil: Betty & Veronica, McCormick Gallery, Chicago

Michael Gaughan / Kirk McCall / Abinadi Meza / Lisa Nankivil, Jerome Foundation Fellowship Exhibition, MCAD Gallery, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis

Art Chicago 2005, McCormick Gallery, Chicago


PROJECTS + COMMISSIONS

2011-12

Year-long studio project exploring the technical challenges and creative opportunities of non-toxic printmaking, with major funding provided by a grant from the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.

2009

Exhibition co-curator, X LIBRIS: The Re-Purposed Book, Traffic Zone Gallery , Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art, Minneapolis

Visiting artist, Highpoint Editions, Minneapolis

2007-08

Visiting artist, Highpoint Editions, Minneapolis

2003

Collaboration with Minnesota poet and writer Ken McCullough, who composed poetry inspired by my paintings. Painted the cover illustration for his book, Obsidian Point: A Triptych, Lone Oak Press, 2003.