Frieze Viewing Room: Florian Meisenberg

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.