Jin Meyersons Forecast at Arario Seoul
By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
Dizzying, chaotic images fill the canvases of American artist Jin Meyerson. He captures pictures from the Internet, newspapers, magazines, movies and television, and manipulates them into works with distorted, kinetic imagery.
At his solo show ``Forecast'' at Arario Seoul, Meyerson's huge paintings exude pulsating energy owing to the swirling colors.
``I think ― tragically ― right now art is primarily decorative and it does not operate in the service to culture as it used to," Meyerson said, at the Arario Seoul last week.
"The title `Forecast' is in reference to wanting to take on kind of a space between the journalistic present and the historical present… I think the work is trying to deal with the issues of the world and my perception of it, and of course, through the privilege of having an audience, their perception of it.''
Born in Incheon in 1972, Meyerson was adopted and moved to the United States. He grew up in a small town and studied art in Minneapolis, and later went to graduate school at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.
Originally, Meyerson was interested in classical figurative paintings. But once he moved to
New York City, his work changed. ``I think it was just this desire to accelerate everything. I moved to New York and I never lived in a city that large before. I really felt overwhelmed. … The work completely changed when I got there.''
His works are based on images from various sources of media. Meyerson watches CNN every morning, reads newspapers and surfs the Internet for his huge digital database of images.
``My generation was the first to grow up with computers. Everyone before me didn't have them, and everyone after me had them when they were born. I make this point because, with globalization, the world got instantly smaller and bigger, simultaneously. It completely redefined my imagination. My ability to accumulate information, it completely exploded," he said.
If he sees an interesting photograph, he scans it. To create that swirling pattern, he twists the photographs while scanning them, and then recreate it on the canvas. ``The way the distortion is done is very analog. As I'm scanning the image, I would spin it like a DJ and I do hundreds of versions of that. Then I start putting it together mentally,'' Meyerson said.
One of his works ``Geoneo'' is meant to show how the financial crisis has affected Detroit ― America's automobile manufacturing hub. ``They started this pilot project where they're trying to `green' Detroit and make a small area which is completely carbon neutral," Meyerson said. "It's a very apt metaphor for the situation. You can use that as a model for what is happening in the world, now that there is hope in this situation.''
But don't assume that Meyerson wants to force an opinion on the audience through his works. ``It is intended to sum up this moment. This work could not have been made in any other time and it won't ever be made again. … I think pieces are like children, you raise them and let them go out into the world.''
Asked why he prefers working on huge canvases, Meyerson said ``the paintings I have are between representation and abstraction and to come to terms with that you need a lot of room.''
He stayed at the Arario studios on Jeju Island to work on his pieces for the exhibit. ``I drank a lot," he said with a laugh. "It was very beautiful, very solitary. Jeju was exactly what I needed to finish the show.''
While the works on display at the exhibition are characterized by his ``marbling'' patterns, Meyerson is already thinking of new ways to push his work to the next level.
``I made a figure painting here without any distortions. I am naturally impatient and bored, so I'm always trying to push through the next thing. But I also return to things too."
Meyerson will open a second show at Arario Gallery, Cheonan, Sept. 18. Both shows at Arario Seoul and Cheonan will run through Oct. 25. Visit www.arariogallery.com.