ART CITIES: N.York-Joel Mesler

Deploying words and images, Joel Mesler draws from childhood memories and life experiences to create paintings that meld his private impressions with cultural touchstones. Often evoking his youth in 1980s Los Angeles, his signature artistic style is characterized by bold colors, stylized patterns, bright figuration, and unique calligraphic scripts. Calling to mind diverse influences Mesler’s canvases offer a wry, vulnerable examination of the place where personal and popular iconography convene.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery Archive

Joel Mesler in his solo exhibition “Kitchens are good rooms to cry” presents new paintings, sculptures, and installations. In this exhibition Mesler examines and shares his personal journey from his youth in Los Angeles to the present day—achieved through an installation in three vignettes, each relating to childhood, adulthood, and midlife. Through a dazzling display of work across media, Mesler expounds on the insights of his earned experience, as well as the questions yet to be answered, in a presentation that is at once intimate and exuberant, reflective and bold. The exhibition begins with a powerful symbol from Mesler’s boyhood, that of the swimming pool, the setting of innocent play and parties as well as the early witness of parental affairs and concerns. An immersive and transporting room-size installation of Mesler’s aqueous pool design will create the sensation of being underwater and will surround three floating trompe l’oeil beach balls, cast in bronze and hand painted. Representing the artist’s first foray into sculpture, the beach balls, a prominent and recurring motif in Mesler’s work, are, in his words, being “taken out of the paintings and brought into the real world”. Spinning through time, adolescence and adulthood are conjured in a second installation. Here, Martinique, banana leaf wallpaper evokes the Beverly Hills Hotel, a site intertwined with Mesler’s upbringing and the dissolution of his parents’ marriage. A chromatically painted disco-ball sculpture hangs in the center of the gallery that also feature his vibrant text and image paintings—alluding to the excitement and intrigues of nightlife. Yet, Mesler also takes heed; his canvas “Untitled (Its Fine)”, portrays mountains, a rainbow, and a glittering disco ball alongside richly rendered script that appears to be dripping mud. As the artist explains, at the heart of his mountain scapes is the metaphor that a mountain ascended must also be descended. Duality is a consistent preoccupation in Mesler’s oeuvre, expressed in pairs such as light and dark, empty and full, beginning and end. Dawn and dusk are given form through hand-sculpted ceramic birds that will travel along the staircase like gray cirrus clouds. The second floor will feature large-scale canvases that reflect Mesler today. The works are distinguished by an atmospheric and auratic quality, imparted by his deft hand-dyed patterns on linen. By laying bare his technique, Mesler reveals his background as a printmaker—his knowledge of color gradations and saturation enabling the vivid all-over paintings for which he is most known.  In the new paintings, Mesler leaves the traces of the dye stains and the support exposed, echoing his own vulnerability. His words, which take the form of gold metallic balloons, express concepts meaningful to his maturation such as “Courage,” “Vessel,” “Feelings,” and “Prayer.” However, unlike the taut Mylar Mesler depicts elsewhere, these balloons are slack—it is uncertain whether they are in the midst of inflating or deflating. Mesler’s partially collapsed balloons represent a point of transition between rising and falling. Their mystery composes a poignant image and message—to find solace in the making and presence in the moment.

Photo Left: Joel Mesler, Untitled (Play the Hits), 2024, Pigment on linen, 76 x 72 inches (193 x 182.9 cm), © Joel Mesler, Courtesy the artist and Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery. Photo Right: Joel Mesler, Untitled (Party Time , 2024, Pigment on linen, 76 × 72 inches (193 × 182.9 cm), © Joel Mesler, Courtesy the artist and Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery

Info: Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery, 19 East 64th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 6/6-28/7/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.levygorvydayan.com/