Elijah Wheat Showroom anticipates curiosity, wonder and reveriepresenting the non-traditional photo-based works of three USA based experimental photographers: Jon Verney, Rhiannon Adam & Liz Nielsen at PHOTOFAIRS: Shanghai 2024. Each artistic photographer is bending the constructs of what photography can be, and what can be executed with a Polaroid camera, or entirely without.

Beginning with Jon Verney’s Decomposites, the remarkable micro-world of a corroded Polaroid from 70’s deadstock, transforms into a macro landscape, inviting a viewer to explore the details of a handmade negative, producing a remarkably focused abstract image. Using color fields from other self-produced negatives, Verney’s archival pigment prints center on pursuing moments of wonder. With equal emphasis on science and magic, the creative practice is driven by curiosity and haptic experimentation. He uses unique, alternative photo processes to explore the liminal theme of phase transitions–how matter shifts from one state of being to another–and how these changes express themselves visually.

Rhiannon Adam, an explorer, and also an experimental photographer, travels perpetually, documenting environments with a focus on remote communities, the concept of utopia, and the fine line between fact and fiction. Adam’s work is centered on research-based, long-form, social documentary projects that make use of analogue photographic processes. She embraces an on-going obsession with Polaroid and the materiality of the photographic image. The singular work that we exhibit is an editioned print, yet a personal one. The Polaroid is shot on film, 11 years out of date (on deadstock SX-70). The image relates to her childhood nostalgia (fading through the cracked imperfections) of analogue material. It's a stripping away any signs of when it was shot; it's a way for her to capture the memories she missed (she grew up on a small boat with parents sailing the globe until age 15) by replacing them with someone else’s. Elijah Wheat presented Adam's otherworldly unique analogue montages of Polaroid photo emulsion lifts at the inaugural PHOTOFAIRS, NYC in 2023. She is an expert on Polaroid history and experimental techniques and has authored an exhaustive resource on instant photography, Polaroid: The Missing Manual (Thames & Hudson, 2017, reprinted 2022).

Liz Nielsen brings her most recent camera less unique analogue work to Shanghai, on varied light sensitive materials. One, the traditional FujiFlex, and the other, the film-like transparent FujiClear. Another experimental photographer, Nielsen refers to themselves as a “Light Painter.” With this technique, Nielsen references the painting canon of a still life, and landscape, only future-forward and placed within a cosmic setting (and all that lies in between). The artist’s subjects float location-less, without scale, harnessing the great possibility of life beyond carbon forms and mingling with the presence of emotive vibrating light. Aiming for a quantum vision with a quantum medium, Nielsen’s illustrative work is intended to both be and not be at the same time. The limitless possibilities of capturing a most alive still life, or landscape, captures apparitions of light at a macro scale, however, microcosmically this light is placed within us too.

All of these Artists works center on pursuing moments of wonder, offering an experimental and vibrantly colorful analogue edge. We are thrilled to bring and hold space for this his fantastical, otherworldly wonder-filled experimental photography to Shanghai, China.

Jon Verney (b. 1987 U.S.A) received his MFA from Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan in 2016 and a BFA in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2010. He exhibits his work nationally and internationally, and has been an artist resident at the SIM Residency in Reykjavik, Iceland, the Studios at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Vermont Studio Center, Penland School of Craft, and has spent two years in Florence, Italy working at Studio Art College International. Recent projects include a group show with the artist collective, IQB, hosted by Museo BeGo in Castelfiorentino, Italy, and a collaboration with the Grammy Award-winning musical group, Roomful of Teeth. He divides his time between North Adams, Massachusetts, Tuscany, Italy, and Brooklyn, New York. 

Rhiannon Adam (b. 1985 Ireland) Received an MA English – University of Cambridge, UK, BA (Hons) English – University of Cambridge, UK, Cert. Higher Education Arts, Design and Environment –Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London. She has been shortlisted for, and won, numerous awards, including the Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography and was named as one of The Photographers’ Gallery’s New Talents in 2019. Her work has been published widely in the press, including Le Monde, The Telegraph, the BBC, The British Journal of Photography, Stern, Huffington Post, and the New York Times. In 2022, she was announced as one of eight crew members (all creatives) selected for the first civilian lunar orbital mission; dearMoon, funded by Japanese entrepreneur, Yusaku Maezawa (MZ). The trip will last for approximately one week, and is currently planned for 2024 aboard SpaceX’s Starship.

Liz Nielsen (b. 1975 U.S.A) received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2004, her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002, and her BA in Philosophy and Spanish from Seattle University in 1997. Nielsen's works have been reviewed in *Artforum*, *The Wall Street Journal, *The New Yorker*, *The Financial Times*, *The British Journal of Photography*, *The New York Times*, *LensCulture*, *FOAM magazine*, *ArtSlant* and has been a featured photographer with Photofairs Shanghai blog for her solo in London 2019, among others. Liz has collaborated and shared images of her unique photograms for Hermes on three separate projects, Google Canvas, Meta Headquarters, designer Paul Smith, Sydney Brown Shoes and more. Her work has been collected by the JP Morgan Chase Collection, Fidelity Collection, Progressive Insurance, Stanley Morgan, Harris Bank of Chicago, curators from V&A, and trustees at the Norton Museum among others.

Elijah Wheat Showroom (est. 2015) is a New York-based artist-run gallery and nomadic curatorial experience founded by Carolina Wheat & Liz Nielsen. Currently positioned in Newburgh, NY on the Hudson River, in two buildings comprising 5000 sq/ft of an historic factory. The gallery is named after their late son, Elijah, whose creative insight, righteous vision, perceptive being and stylistic voice for trendsetting embody the spirit that the Showroom honors.