Arnold Mesches
Above: Coming Attractions 10, 2006
Arnold Mesches was born in 1923 in the Bronx, NY and raised in Buffalo, NY. He Moved to Los Angeles in 1943 to accept a scholarship at the Art Center School. Mesches began his fine art career in 1945, moved to New York City in late 1984, where he lived for 18 years before moving to his current home in Gainseville, FL. He has had over 100 solo exhibitions to date as well as countless group shows, is represented in major museums and collections throughout the country and is the recipient of many prestigious grants and awards including the Artforum.com Critics Pick in 2009. He is married to novelist Jill Ciment.
Statement
By combining unlikely juxtapositions, both in painting techniques and disparate imagery, I have tried to re-create the sense of utter instability and sheer insanity that I feel has so often permeated my years. Instead of, as in my salad days, veering toward the overt, I have, for some years now, found myself depicting our time with a sense of unreality bordering on the more unsettling absurd.
When one insists upon making social comments as their source material, the temptation is to express one's anger, to vent the fury of one's reaction to the apparent injustices and continued bloodletting. But, personal anger can be a lonely futility. It never involves others. The world is more complex than this kind of one-sidedness. Absurdity, as a concept, on the other hand, can transcend immediate frustration by asking the viewer to question, not only what they are seeing and feeling, but, more importantly, why they are questioning their awakened uneasiness. Hopefully, the dichotomy only increases when one is seduced by the richness of the painting's surface and the enticing vividness of color; beauty as an art language to complement the darkness and humor. This is the core of my recent work