Composed on raw linen with an economy of gesture and palette, the subjects of these nuanced paintings float in isolation. A grinning man wears a shirt emblazoned “Down and Out in Montauk,” a nod to Orwell seemingly at odds with the comfort radiating from the painting. Elsewhere, Mesler references nautical history, pairing a reduced seascape with a seafaring rhyme and the submerged outline of Melville’s white whale. Across this body of work, it becomes clear that the sea itself is not the subject, but rather, how we encounter it, whether in a state of temporary withdrawal from our everyday lives, or within a work of art. This sentiment is most clear in “Untitled (I’m Moonlighting),” which depicts a figure in a canoe at night, drawing as he drags a paintbrush through the water. The painting reads, “I’m moonlighting”, a reminder of the Mesler’s role as both a painter and an art dealer, a dichotomy that has historically existed in the careers of art world characters from Marcel Duchamp to Maurizio Cattelan.
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