Frieze New York: 2020
May 6 – 15, 2020
Our Frieze New York virtual viewing room with new paintings by Florian Meisenberg can be viewed here.
Florian Meisenberg. Darling Don Quijote, 2020. oil paint and airbrush on canvas. 27 ½ × 27 ½ inches (69.85 × 69.85 cm). Photo: Daniel Terna.
Simone Subal Gallery is pleased to present a solo presentation by Florian Meisenberg for Frieze Viewing Room. Florian Meisenberg originally planned to create for Frieze New York 2020 a site-specific, artificial ecosystem that paid homage to New York both as an urban space and an intellectual center. The installation was to be oriented around a back-lit circular painting that had a sun-like glow, and Meisenberg would have wallpapered the booth with indian ink-splotched canvas. Upon these prussian blue stains, several circular paintings would have been dispersed throughout. The booth’s center would have contained a macabre metaphor for the times: a New York City bike rack with a locked unusable wheel.
Many of the themes Meisenberg wished to address are still present here in the online viewing room. In fact, this cloud-based context reinforces many of the topics Meisenberg has been engaging with for years: how canvases, screens, and other flat surfaces mediate between different physical spaces and function as conveyors of information. This project, whether experienced online or physically, elides the analog-digital divide and expands upon previous pieces that explore artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and gaming. The paintings are loosely representational and morph both in their figure-ground relation and in narrative structure; a mutability reiterated in the format of this virtual exhibition.