"For my work to succeed it should be concerned with reality, but that part of reality that is inexact, uncertain, mysterious, maybe anxious and in a state of becoming - an art involved with feelings."
- Melissa Meyer, Art News, November, 1982
LAUNCH F18 is pleased to present This Must Be The Place, an online viewing room curated by Marissa Graziano featuring work by Melissa Meyer, Marc Schepens and Robin Curtil. The exhibition launches exclusively online on Thursday, March 10 and remains on view through April 21, 2022.
The art of collage, stemming from European Dadaism and Cubism in the early 20th century, has persevered as a form of visual language that contemporary artists continue to investigate. This influential technique allows painters to engage and use different materials, fusing anything from newspaper and magazines, to posters, text and found objects for the creation of visually stunning and thought-provoking images. In addition to the tactility of collage, the process of gathering, sorting, collating and associating imagery permeates throughout the works within This Must Be The Place.
Through process-based abstraction, the relationship to collage and gesture is highlighted through the presence of the artists’ hand. Compounded gestures push against disparate applications of the grid, guiding the viewer through the act of painting as it oscillates between atmosphere and structure. This process reveals itself within Melissa Meyer’s practice. Through a series of repeated gestures that build up into squares of color, her calligraphic marks ammas into loose grids that quickly fill the canvas, and often spill out onto an abbuting frame. Similarly, Marc Schepens uses substructures as a foundation for his paintings. Working additively, he carefully responds to a framework of repeating lines that weave across his canvas. While Meyer’s mark making rhythmically expands within and around a text based framework, Schepens disrupts the steady tempo of the grid by allowing one axis to organically develop as he navigates the negative space between each line.
The utilization of the grid in Robin Curtil’s work shifts from its functional structure to an active character that engages the gestural language that develops on his surface. The found papers and posters that Curtil repurposes from along his commute hold layers of transparent color that constantly push elusive forms in and out of focus. Working from a history with collage, both Meyers and Curtil derive the material for their paintings from a repository of images that refer to reality, but no longer stand directly in contact with it.
Whether through an assemblage of ideas and materials or a response to space, process based abstraction extends throughout the works in This Must Be The Place. Each painting evokes the aesthetics of both individual and collective memory through a deep investigation into the act of painting.
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.
Marc Schepens received his BA in Art from Georgetown University and an MFA in Painting from Boston University. Recent solo exhibitions include “East Point”, Bromfield Gallery (2020), Boston; “Dog Paintings”, Transit Gallery, Harvard Medical School (2019); “Works on Paper”, Harbor Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Boston (2018); and “Egem”, Artspace Gallery, Northern Essex Community College (2017). Recent Group shows include “The Missing Half Second”, Able Baker Contemporary, Portland, ME (2019) and “Those Who Can”, Alpha Gallery, Boston (2019).
Schepens has been an artist in residence at Frans Masereel in Kasterlee, Belgium in 2013 and Lijiang Studios in Lashahai, Yunnan Province, China in 2014. He currently teaches Painting at Boston University and lives in Nahant, Massachusetts, a town on the North Shore.
Robin Curtil is a French painter who lives and works in New York. He received his degree from the Superior School Art Design of Saint-Étienne in 2017. Recent exhibitions include the 2020 Art Press Biennale at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint-Étienne, France (2020); the French Institute of Sphax, Tunisia (2016); the 4th Wuhan Biennale, China (2017) and Ceysson & Bénétière, Saint-Étienne, France (2017). His work is currently in the In/Between 2022 -Transcendental Coordinates exhibition at New York Live Arts.
Curtil has been an artist in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon, France in 2021 and has previously taught drawing and painting at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon and at Jean-Monnet University in Saint-Étienne. Curtil is currently a Mentee at the Immigrant Artist Program of the New York Foundation for the Arts.
For more information or a preview of this online viewing room please contact us at info@launchf18.com.