jerry Meyer: Very Long Distance
September 15 - October 29, 2016SELECTED WORKS
Denise Bibro Fine Art, 529 West 20th Street, Chelsea, New York City, is pleased to announce Jerry Meyer’s solo exhibition Very Long Distance, September 15- October 29. This exhibition features an immersive, large-scale installation alongside new illuminated multimedia boxes that are distinct to Jerry Meyer.
Meyer’s installation, Very Long Distance, is a prime
example of the fabrication of authenticity, as in theater or
a novel. Similar in form to his previous installation, My Great Grandfather’s Attempts to Turn Sexual Energy Into Electricity to Power Small Machinery Based on the Principles of Sigmund Freud and Nikola Tesla (2013), Meyer draws us into a coherent world of sight and sound through the illuminated construction that preternaturally melts the line between perceived reality and fiction.
While the title Very Long Distance may allude to the progression of Meyer’s career as a visual artist, manifestly it refers to séances where the medium, a certain Thelma Rubenstein, uses early twentieth-century technology to conduct two-way conversations with “the other side.” The time is during or immediately after The Great War of 1914-1918. The place is Lily Dale, New York, a community devoted to spiritualism. Several characters populate Meyer’s universe including Erich Weiss (a.k.a. Harry Houdini), his mother Cecilia, Anthony Comstock (the founder of The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice), Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and of course Madame Rubenstein.
Employing a vast diversity of ephemeral objects in his installation and new boxes, Meyer’s works are as rich in textures and materials as they are in layers of meaning. Meyer continues to hone his psychic powers and psychological discourse. His artistic language is as equally insightful as it is witty.
This is Meyer’s fourth solo exhibition at Denise Bibro Fine Art. Meyer has exhibited widely at venues including the Eli Whitney Museum, Hamden, CT; Artspace, New Haven, CT; Art Miami, Miami, FL; Art Hamptons, Bridgehampton, NY; Koplin Del Rio Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Chautauqua Gallery, Chautauqua Institute, NY; The San Jose Rep Gallery, San Jose, CA; and the Sharon Arts Center in Peterborough, NH. Among his reviews are, Civilization and Its Discontents, ARTNEWS review, by Valerie Gladstone, 2011; FLAVORWIRE, Jerry Meyer’s Freudian Jukeboxes, Maps, and Trivial Pursuit Games, Judy Berman, 2011; DESIGNBOOM, Jerry Meyer: Civilization and its Discontents, 2011; THE VILLAGE VOICE, Best in Show: Jerry Meyer at Denise Bibro Fine Art, by Robert Shuster. He is featured in For Which It Stands: Americana in Contemporary Art, curated by Carla Sakamoto, published by The Curated Collection, 2012.