The recent paintings of Korean-born, US-raised, Jin Meyerson could be said to provide his viewer with a prodigious peak into the monstrous, inner workings of the media?s imagery. Combining a panoply of techniques?India ink, oil paint, spray paint, poured acrylic, etc? Meyerson draws his imagery from various magazine sources, churns it all through his computer, and proceeds to depict it in a style as meticulous as it is charged. And while disaster functions as the ballast of these vast compositions, detail wins out in a schizophrenic bravura of optical saturation (as in the title of his last solo New York show, High Cholesterol Moment.)
Disaster on a grand scale? in the whistling key of train wrecks, plane crashes, bombings, earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, to name a few? is very much the starting point of these pictures. As such Meyerson takes on the legacy of Warhol while evoking the cut up/collage, neo-pop paintings of Jeff Koons, via his galvanized palette and rich layering of imagery. However, in Meyerson?s case, it is not just imagery that piles up and is juxtaposed, but whole, disparate worlds or planes of existence, ranging from the history of both abstract and figurative painting to history itself. It?s as if Meyerson vouchsafed the media and its fund of imagistic riches a sort of autonomous existence, either that, or simply pulled back the curtain. Because looking at his unruly and roiling imagery, one gets the feeling of gazing into (or being gazed at by?) the visceral unconscious of the media as it ?works it out,? tries to assimilate its own weltering, unassimilable content, get it down, and make room for more.
This is white-knuckle stuff, as the American poet Ted Berrigan once wrote of his own practice: ?One hand writing, one hand hanging on.? Meyerson, himself hanging on as he paints, likewise asks us, or rather barely warns us to hang on to our seats when suddenly faced with one of his pictures (because it is always sudden). -- Chris Sharp