This post was first published as “Slideshow: Paintings That Hang in the Balance” on The Arty Semite of the Forward.
Accidents That Always Happen by Joshua Meyer
As you stand in the Dolby Chadwick Gallery in San Francisco, you can’t be sure if the figures in Joshua Meyer’s multi-layered oil paintings are emerging toward you or receding away into a complex sea of colors. That lack of certainty suits the artist just fine, as he considers his paintings to reside in “a netherworld, an in-between place of frictions, edges and reactions between different things.”
The 16 paintings by Meyer which make up this show, titled “Everything in Between” and which runs until January 29, exist in stark contrast to the clean, sharp lines of the gallery space with its white walls, blond wood floor and large, loft-like windows overlooking the tony Union Square shopping district.
Meyer explained that it is impossible to make a line when painting with a palette knife, as he has done almost exclusively for the past decade. “I found something intrinsically wrong about brushes. With a knife, you work more spot by spot, moment by moment. It’s about juxtaposition rather than smooth motion,” he said.
Click here to read more and to view a slideshow of paintings by Joshua Meyer.
© 2011 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.
Tags: Bezalel Academy, Boston, Cambridge, Dolby Chadwick Gallery, Jewish artists, Joshua Meyer, oil painting, painters, San Francisco, Yale University
