Paintings by Yale grad on display at Slifka Center
June 1, 2006 by Howard Blas
NEW HAVEN — Most painters use paintbrushes or even fingers in their work. Joshua Meyer, a Yale College (1996) graduate and current resident of Cambridge, Mass., uses
neither-he paints only with knives! Meyers uses knives to layer the paint and move the colors around for his oil paintings.
In the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale University exhibit “Becoming: New Paintings by Joshua Meyer,” Meyer’s paintings explore the act of creation. Most paintings are oil on canvas, ranging from 8 inch by 8 inch, to 24 inch by 24 inch. Meyers use fall colors, browns, light, darkness, and faces and bodies of various sizes and styles to engage his viewers. His works explore such themes as pregnancy, childhood, and the self.
Linda Friedlaender of the Yale Center for British Art observes, “Meyer’s surfaces are loaded with paint. They reveal the artistic process while involving the viewer in each artistic decision along the
way-whether they know it or not.”
Dr. Sharrona Pearl of Harvard University, writing in the exhibit catalog, says, “This is a show about movement. Each of Joshua Meyer’s paintings are constantly in motion. Layers emerge with each viewing, the past, present and future combining in lush and sensual images that are as tactile as they are visual. Meyer’s allows and, indeed, insists on the viewer’s participation in the experience of his works. Not only do his paintings change us, but we, the viewers, change them, for they are incomplete without our interaction. Every piece emerges from struggle and re-evaluation, producing arresting and original images that pulse with life. Meyer’s works engage the viewers, even as the viewers engage the
works-together creating, building and ultimately and always, becoming.”
Dr. Steve Copeland of the Boston Hebrew College, where Meyers’ work has been displayed, observes, “This young master-artist…engages fateful questions concerning the character of art and Judaism, their possibilities, challenges and problems.”
Meyer was born in Lubbock, Texas, received a certificate from the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem and is a graduate of Yale University.
“Becoming: New Paintings by Joshua Meyer,” is on display through June 8 in the Allan and Leah Rabinowitz Gallery at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale University — 80 Wall Street New Haven (Monday through Thursday 10am - 7 pm; Friday through Sunday 10am - 3pm) This is Meyer’s fourth exhibition at the Slifka Center since his graduation from Yale College in 1996.
His work will be on display at the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU from Aug. 1-Dec. 8, and at the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art in the Spring of 2007.