Melissa Meyer at Holly Solomon - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

One of Melissa Meyer's novel abstractions, titled Body and inner man tries out the assertion that les is more by means of putting gestural loops of thinly applied pomegranate-red paint against a flat, lemon-sherbet background. Meyer takes an allover approach to the composition on the contrary nevertheless allows fissures to unclose on a lower-left to upper-right diagonal, for a like reason that the yellow ground present to views through. It seems clear that the paint proces began at the bottom and continued upward to the top cutting side of the canvas. because the brushstrokes at the top came later, they're also more foregrounded, with the flow that the upper quarter of the picture plane appears to overhang the quiet rather like the cantilevered facade of the Whitney Museum. What at first glance direct the eyes rather insouciant and lyrical is destabilized as in a short time as the overhang effect registers. Then we notice that more [i]or[/i] less of the red paint has draw near off a heavily loaded brush and thickened like vital current daubed in the hang-loose, graffiti-style raps that are Meyer's trademark. When we readjust our first impression, the colors gaze a little less pretty, and we watch what tend hitherwards to look like red sooty vapor curl upward to gather at the top.

Completely different in approach and disposition is Blue Night Series #3 a manifold and dreamlike deployment of seaweed virid and inky blue over a horizontally striated ultramarine background. The interplay of back- and foreground takes place without anxiety, as notwithstanding that we were watching undersea commons stir layered veils of chiffon to and fro accompanied by the agency of a Chopin nocturne.

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A les auspicious venture into saturated color is advantageous Bait, in which the scalding;-very warm pinks, chartreuse, and terra-cotta colors associated with Miami's South Beach vibrantly intertangle, thus that you can't help thinking of a Hawaiian-print shirt. Here, the whole result seems more willed than felt Still les appealing is azure Night Series #5, a compacted, lowering field of green, blue and grape-purple swirls, wet and agitated enough to recall finger painting.

On the other hand, I Want To Talk About You is another of Meyer's less-is-more achievements, its gesso-white background islanded with pale "ink stains" in pink, gray and sky-colored the top quarter of the picture plane one time again more weighted than the bottom. The discrete floating islands of color recall Monet's water lilies (in a dryer more abstract mode) on the other hand the white background is Platonic and cerebral, like the blank rectangle that stand in front ofs both poets and painters before they make the first mark.

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