EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN

Joshua Meyer’s work suggests buried histories and ancient secrets. Using a palette knife to work and rework overlapping layers of oil paint, Meyer’s compositions are colorful, dense patchworks of concise strokes. Challenging abstraction’s opposition to representation, solitary human figures are concisely articulated within the luscious impasto. Such dematerialization of form and kaleidoscopic arrangement of color furthermore play with our understanding of space, making it appear as if the figures were sinking back both into the canvas and into time.

“I’m chasing truths,” says Meyer. “I am always exploring. As I struggle with a painting over endless months, the colors, ideas, emotions, and experiences accumulate on the canvas. Meaning seeps out from in between these momentary contradictions. These paintings are collapsed time.”

Meyer’s exhibit opened on the second night of Hanukkah, the Jewish “Festival of Lights.” The timing underscores the artist’s deep engagement with both Judaism and its ideas about light and creation. According to Hebrew College professor Steven Copeland, “This young master- artist [...] engages fateful questions concerning the character of art and of Judaism, their possibilities, challenges and problems.”

Joshua Meyer was born in 1974 in Lubbock, Texas. A graduate of Yale University and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, he has been recognized with numerous fellowship, awards and honors, including a grant from Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 2008. He is currently a Fellow of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.