RJ Messineo
Me in Meadow, Jun 24 – Aug 13, 2023

Canada is excited to announce Me in Meadow, a solo exhibition by RJ Messineo. Working in their trademark approach to painting by physically cutting into and adding onto impasto surfaces, Messineo expands the possibilities of the traditional flat surfaces of the medium while showcasing a variety of palettes, as well as many different painting tempos and emotional tones.

Me in Meadow captures fleeting visual phenomena, including weather and light, traversing the built and natural world. The artist’s front yard is of particular interest in these works: Messineo’s pleasure in watching plant life unfold currently captures the artist's imagination. The title is derived from a private mantra that Messineo developed while meditating on whether or not to cull plants or let them grow wildly. The metaphorical similarities of tending a meadow and maintaining a studio practice isn’t lost on Messineo who sees painting as a negotiation between control and an openness to chance.

The palette in Me in Meadow varies from piece to piece and often feels as if it corresponds to specific seasons. For example, Bloodroot, 2023, is like a very early spring. Its red and muddy maroons have an earthy feeling of soil awakening, signifying dormancy moving towards a more fecund time of year. The white squarish forms, like melting snow, cover and jostle against each other. This sense of becoming surrenders in difficult garden, 2023, which features an exuberantly decisive flume of sky blue and grassy green, barely contained by the perimeters of the painting.

The range of realities in Messineo’s faceted materiality is fostered by cutting into the wooden panels, creating possibilities beyond the normal boundaries of painting. The incised holes happen early or later on in the artist’s process, but each time the cuts change the meaning and trajectory of the painting. The holes expose colors and forms beneath the painting, and interrupt brushstrokes and the swelling colorful fields.

RJ Messineo (b. 1980, Hartford, CT) currently lives and works in Greenfield, MA. The artist received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (2009), and a BFA from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (2002). Messineo is represented by Canada, New York, and Morán Morán, Los Angeles, and has exhibited at venues such as Pace Gallery, James Cohan Gallery, Thomas Erben Gallery, all in New York, NY; Ceysson et Bénétière, Koerich, Luxembourg; Artist Curated Projects, Redling Fine Art, and REDCAT Gallery, all in Los Angeles, CA. Messineo is a Shandaken: Paint School Fellow, and completed the Fire Island Artist Residency in 2014. Messineo’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Dallas Museum of Art.

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