Meisenberg’s Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently further develops his interest in the back and forth flow of images between the realms of the digital and the analog. Meisenberg sees the material and virtual as part of the same mimetic continuum that is interrupted by various kinds of screens: from the surface of a canvas, for example, to that of a computer. These different interfaces create space for meaning to take shape, and for this show, Meisenberg’s idealistic-materialistic mash-up is also the foundation for an investigation into the tension between systems and randomness.
Each piece on view has a particular condition that enables chance situations to occur. The large painting, a triptych, recedes almost anamorphically, making the physical object itself an exercise in perspectival space. Meisenberg judiciously marks the surface with vertical columns of paint squeezed directly from the tube. He then allows the medium—the oil—to separate from the pigment, which leaves unpredictable halo-like stains around the colorful bands. Extending from the chunky stripes are subtle dotted lines that create triangles; some of which allude to pictorial depth, while others remain flat. Meisenberg sees the triangles as sites of potential, representations of the energy that comes out of the oil-pigment split. Forming a link between the largest and second largest panels and occupying the bottom right hand corner of the third, are improvised screen prints made by pushing white paint through store-bought lace. The fabric’s mesh compresses the paint into impressions on the canvases. They are analogical depictions of the digital fabrication of images.
Two large, thin screens are placed at either end of the gallery. They show live renderings that never stay the same. Meisenberg, in collaboration with software developers, devised a program that continually downloads three-dimensional shapes from open source content. The screens are the framework for a dialog between amorphous blobs that constantly change in form because of the absorption of new updated information as well as in response to the transformations taking place in the corresponding globule. These compositions pulse, turn, and spread across stock backgrounds that reference the classical tradition, visually containing indefinable configurations. For Meisenberg, the piece captures the contemporary moment: the way images and ideas coalesce and disperse, move from one site to another. The work is also a way for him to turn the structural logic of the Internet into a site for collaboration, in which data becomes the basis for a choreographic arrangement.
The ever-developing shapes that dance before the viewer’s eyes are akin to the viscous verticals of color in the paintings and to the arrangements of deformed plastic chairs whose standardized construction has been individualized by intense heat and physical manipulation. The mutant seats—once innocuous in their generic invisibility—congregate in clusters around the spaces in an effort to find a new sense of collective identity. Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently is an environment that folds, expands, and contracts around the viewer. The slippages between the virtual and the material have become increasingly irrelevant.
Meisenberg was born in 1980 in Berlin and he works and lives in New York. He graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2010. Selected solo shows: Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel, Germany (2014); Mendes Wood, São Paulo (2014); Wentrup Gallery, Berlin (2014); Avlskarl Gallery, Copenhagen (2014); Provinz Editionen, Bochum, Germany (2013); Kate MacGarry, London (2013); Kunst aus NRW / Förderpreis für Bildende Kunst, Ehemalige Reichsabtei, Aachen, Germany (2012); Tanja Pol, Munich, Germany (2012); Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany (2011); Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany (2009). Recent selected group exhibitions: Galerie Václava Špály, Prag (2014); Queens International, Queens Museum of Art, New York (2013); KW Kunstwerke, Berlin (2013): Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Germany (2013); Boros Collection II, Berlin, Germany (2012); Avlskarl Projects, Copenhagen, Denmark (2012); Solinger Kunstmuseum, Solingen, Germany (2011); New Talents Biennale 2010, Cologne, Germany (2010); Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany (2010); Kunstverein Langenhagen, Germany (2010). The monograph If you stare on this painting for 72 hours you will loose 4.5 pounds was published in 2009 in conjunction with Meisenberg’s show at the Ludwig Forum. In 2013 Distanz Verlag published Meisenberg’s second monograph with the title: http://www.liveleak.com/view?l=266_1344428832.
