5/25/2023

Exhibition

Melissa Meyer: Grace and Me

May 11 – June 20, 2023

Contemporary Art Matters is delighted to present ‘Grace & Me’, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Melissa Meyer, a New York Abstract Expressionist artist known for her rich palette and gestural style.
left: Melissa Meyer, Summer in the City I, 2018, Oil on canvas, 80x60 in. right: Melissa Meyer, Chelsea Quickstep II, 2022, Oil on canvas, 20x40 in.

left: Melissa Meyer, Summer in the City I, 2018, Oil on canvas, 80×60 in.
right: Melissa Meyer, Chelsea Quickstep II, 2022, Oil on canvas, 20×40 in.

She began her career in the early 1970’s at a time when Grace Hartigan was a powerful figure in the NY art world. Hartigan paved the road for many women painters, offering artistic inspiration and also as a role model in a male dominated field. ‘Grace & Me’ features recent paintings energized by the commission and inclusion in the exhibition ‘Inspired Encounters: Women Artists and the Legacies of Modern Art’, where she was asked to respond to a pair of Grace Hartigan paintings in the Rockefeller Collection. The resulting paintings A Nod to Grace and Times Square are currently on view at the David Rockefeller Creative Art Center in Tarrytown, NY.

In many ways Meyer appreciates the enormity of the work done by her predecessors. When she emerged as a young artist, Hartigan was an important leader in the art world. Hartigan was the only woman to be included in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition ‘The New American Painting’ that toured eight cities in Europe in 1958-59. The Museum of Modern Art acquired Persian Jacket (1952) and River Bathers (1953), and the collector Nelson Rockefeller purchased City Life (1956) and Salome (1963) for his Kykuit estate.

Where Hartigan was known for her gestural movements with a thickly-loaded brush and a shallow surface, Meyer brings a lighter touch with loose, loopy lines in front of stacks of transparent boxes of background colors. They both exhibit the AbEx focus on the surface with decidedly different energies. Meyer’s urban paintings are vibrant with the energy and anxiety of her city. Graffiti, sky-scrapers and rock and roll have taken root where once jazz played in a place moving from post-war to boom town. Meyer understands and connects to history while forging her own path, expressing the chaos and emotions of the 21st century.

left: Melissa Meyer, Chelsea Square 12, 2022, Oil on canvas, 16×16 in.
left center: Melissa Meyer, Living in the City, 2016, Oil on canvas, 60×50 in.
center: Melissa Meyer, A Little Nod IV, 2021, Oil on canvas, 20×32 in.
right: Melissa Meyer, Chelsea Square 8, 2022, Oil on canvas, 16×16 in

“In 1987, the legendary John Bernard Myers, an art dealer and writer who presented and published the work of many well-known New York artists and poets, and mounted the first solo shows of such New York painters as Larry Rivers, Grace Hartigan, Helen Frankenthaler, Red Grooms, Alfred Leslie and Fairfield Porter, invited me to be in a show that he was curating at the Kouros Gallery, New York, titled ‘Knowing What I Like’. At the opening, he was very excited for me to meet Grace Hartigan, who had come to the opening. But Grace was not excited to meet me. She didn’t really want to share Myer’s attention, resulting in– I would say– some rudeness.

Fast forward to visiting Kykuit at the Rockefeller Estate when I was invited to respond to something in the estate’s collection or environment as part of a commission, and I saw Grace’s paintings Salome and City Life and was struck by their beauty and power. I decided to respond to Salome with a painting called A Nod to Grace and forgive Grace for her rudeness. Also elsewhere, I came across images of another Hartigan painting, not in the collection, titled Little Salome, which inspired me to make my Little Nods series.

Currently, Grace and I are exhibiting side by side in ‘Inspired Encounters’ in the new David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center in Pocantico Hills, New York.”

Melissa Meyer, February 2023

Artist Melissa Meyer with Salome by Grace Hartigan (left) and A Nod to Grace by Melissa Meyer (right)

Melissa Meyer is a New York based abstract painter known for her lyrical paintings and calligraphic approach. Her approach is layered and thoughtful, intuitive and responsive.

Melissa Meyer received both a BS and an MA from New York University. Her lengthy exhibition history includes solo exhibitions at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York; Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York; Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, Ohio; Holly Solomon Gallery, New York and Galerie Renee Ziegler, Zurich, Switzerland. Meyer’s development has been surveyed in two traveling exhibitions – one originated at the New York Studio School and the second at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Her works have been included recently in group exhibitions at The Jewish Museum, New York; Texas Gallery, Houston; Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York and the National Academy of Design in New York, an organization of which she is a member.

She has completed public commissions in New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Bishkek US Embassy in Kyrgyzstan. Her work is included in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum and many other public and private collections across the United States. Meyer was awarded a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock Krasner Foundation and a fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation. She is a frequent artist in residence at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York as well as at the Vermont Studio Center.

left: Melissa Meyer, Chelsea Quickstep III, 2022, Oil on canvas, 20x40 in. right: Melissa Meyer, Living in the City, 2016, Oil on canvas, 60x50 in.

left: Melissa Meyer, Chelsea Quickstep III, 2022, Oil on canvas, 20×40 in.
right: Melissa Meyer, Living in the City, 2016, Oil on canvas, 60×50 in.