dArt International Magazine

by D. Dominick Lombardi

The late paintings of John Meridith have a different sort of clarity than his earlier works, where black lines were used to clarify shapes, emphasize movement and forge a foreground. In the last decade of his life, when Meredith switched “…between cigarettes and bronchodilators, likely with a paintbrush in hand…”, he created paintings that are more distilled, direct and meditative. Already an introverted individual, in those last ten years of his life, he became even more reclusive knowing his days were numbered. This was especially true during the onset of his battle with emphysema. This dire reality appears to have pushed the artist toward a more transcendent vision, despite any anger he may have been feeling.

The earliest of his late paintings here are all from 1990, and they are the five most hopeful and brightest works. Only Tangiers No II has any reference of Meredith’s use of black to clarify his earlier visions. At or just after the beginning of most of the paintings here, Meredith placed strips of tape to mask the white or lightly painted ground of the canvas. At some point in the painting process the tape was removed, and in many instances painted over a bit – or totally if the artist found that relatively clean stripe to be too imposing or distracting to the overall composition. In Tangiers No II, the artist comes close to suggesting a portrait with strangely clownlike features. Any suggestion of humor that might enter one’s thoughts here is quickly dispelled by the large, jet black swathes of paint that obliterate any indication of a mouth, while the splashes of paint thinner, probably turpentine, create purple, black and red drips indicating some sort of distress.

The most compelling work from the 1990’s is Reclining Figure. To the mostly primary colors of the red, yellow and blue backdrop, the artist adds wide sweeping strokes of heavily muddied white to suggest a lounging subject that is partially obscured by a wash of ochre over the figure’s legs. The brilliance here is the way Meredith utilizes such a heavily contrasted paint application of the figure, as opposed to the rest of the painted surface to work in the greatly abstracted and simplified human form. Placed just right of center, the figure looks backlit by brilliant sunlight – a visual tour de force much greater than the sum of its parts.

Then there are two paintings from 1993, which bring back the use of black lines – only this time it is more about creating rhythmic upward movement that is both alluring and impermeable in Emperor, or a tangled trap of contrasting thoughts in Key Largo. Then there are four paintings from 1994. The one named Untitled is the most hopeful in palette and approach and reminds me very much of the serene and seductive paintings Matisse made while living in Nice. Conversely, Eroica is the most disturbing work in the exhibition, and consists of two ghostly forms painted over a black ground that interact and look back at the viewer creating a chilling effect.

The two Untitled paintings from 1997 show most profoundly, the way Meredith worked with masking tape. In both works, the tape is used as a tool to create structure and composition. Working within a very shallow space, the artist manages to create compelling spiritual depth. In their clarity and simplicity, these two paintings remind me of De Kooning’s late works when his debilitating illness changed his approach and aesthetic. The one example from 1999, painted a year before his death, features four white haired feminine forms that intertwine like smoke from one of Meredith’s many cigarettes. A late statement on how life, living, lust and death are fleeting and beyond our control, like smoke from a fire and Meredith is the flame.

John Meredith: Last Breaths, June 6th – July 13th, 2024. Christopher Cutts Gallery, 21 Morrow Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6R 2H9

D. Dominick Lombardi

Over the past twelve years, artist Eleen Lin has looked to Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick for inspiration, in the production of her long running series collectively titled Mythopoeia. With great and expanding depth and detail, Lin takes every angle, including “the idiosyncratic mistranslations between English and Mandarin versions of the book,” up to today’s lesser looked at undercurrents of homoeroticism and multiculturalism to guide her layered narratives. As a result, this stunningly beautiful and curiously complex solo exhibition stands as a must see show for art lovers and artists alike.

In Shining Seas, Lin reveals in exquisite style and varied technical transitions of color and clarity a mystical world in a slightly upturned space that slowly builds in detail and thickness of paint. Here, viewers are left with an expanding experience with surprising clarity that at times crackles and glows in works like The young philosopher (2015), where the ship’s decorative railing, or what is left of the bulwark from the Pequod, appears to protect a nest of eggs perched atop a dangerously damaged deck. Then there are the secondary and tertiary objects like the Chinese yo-yo that hangs from the main mast, the clothespins and the plastic bag attached to one of the cross ropes, the classic red and white life preserver in the distant seas and the large looming ‘shape of water’ woman that bounds up on the horizon. All these components point to both a playful and purposeful approach, adding personal history and global environmental concerns that seep into our subconscious.

Born in Taiwan, raised in Thailand and now living and working in New York City, Lin carries with her three distinct aesthetic influences that produce surprisingly clean color, a flair for the striking narrative and a pliable use of the metaphor. The central moral of the story that has inspired Lin all these years is the dangers of unrelenting thoughts of revenge. In the novel, all the characters die except the novel’s narrator Ishmael, who survives by using his good friend Queequeg’s coffin as a flotation device. In this presentation of the series, the sense of the fruitlessness of revenge moves from the central theme allowing the artist more range to explore the novel’s after effects on her personal past and present.

As the Mythopoeia series has evolved and expanded over the past dozen or so years, Lin continues to push the narrative both inwardly and outward resulting in visual spaces that pull you into the action, tweaking the viewer’s awareness of the natural trajectory of life. A sensation especially felt in the two larger works The young philosopher (2015) and Life folded Death; Death trellised Life (2024), and the medium sized Crow’s nest (2015).

Of the three works mentioned so far, Life folded Death; Death trellised Life is the one that takes place on what looks like a stage set made to look as if it is completely under water. Technically speaking, this painting clearly shows the artist’s process working first with thinned layers of acrylic paint applied to a stretched, unprimed cotton canvas, which in this instance sets up a prismatic background that dazzles the eye. A second layer of thin paint is applied with edgy details revealing large leaf flora and shoots of bamboo rendered just enough not to take attention away from the main subject in center stage, the great sperm whale’s complete skeleton. From there, it looks like Lin switches to oils, painting in the precisely rendered whale remains emerging from the confines of a large net, with its head adorned with peacock feathers. Animated as a puppet hanging from several thin black strings, the whale performs on a stage that has curious details, including a computerized light source that periodically changes color.

Meet. Greet. Fleet. (2018), one of the first paintings you will encounter when entering the exhibit, is one that addresses the homoerotic aspect Lin finds in Moby Dick. Here we see two fishermen meeting in the open sea, in multi-colored boats set against a colorful rainbowed sky. Like the preliminary painting method previously mentioned, Lin begins with a stunning wash of bright colors across an unprimed canvas. Over this, the artist adds a swirling sea populated by a feisty swordfish who pierces the checkered side of one vessel as it fights for its freedom. Since the many-colored rope that winds around the fish to its imperiled state spools out from a box in the boat on the left, and the fact that the attached fish is nosed nicely into the adjacent boat on the right links the two men together in an extended virtual embrace. An embrace that portends to end in a more personal encounter as signified by the unseen sperm whale that spouts water up and into the point where the two men touch.

What I find most telling in Meet. Greet. Fleet. (2018) is the thickly textured clouds in the sky. Using plaster or perhaps modeling paste in the acrylic paint, Lin attaches weighty clouds that seem to suggest trouble ahead, even though both Thailand and Taiwan had or were debating protections for same sex couples at the time of this painting. Then there are the intricately painted hats and shadows that obscure the men’s faces. Perhaps it is a prophetic reference to the middle of the Trump era as we see so clearly today, how certain politicians and supreme court judges are trying hard to turn back the sands of time.

The exhibition Eleen Lin: Shining Seas features paintings, drawings and watercolor, gouache and graphite on paper by Eleen Lin, and runs through July 19 at C24 Gallery in Chelsea, New York City.