JOHN MENDELSOHN | Dream Garden

January 6 - February 18, 2017 

Opening Reception: Friday, January 6, 6-9pm

VIEW EXHIBITION

In the Main Gallery, John Mendelsohn will present his Dream Garden paintings, whose scintillating quality is derived from colored sand with acrylic and latex enamel on terry cloth. The sand’s individual quanta of color are both embedded in the surface and project toward the viewer. The paintings are abstract, but they evoke natural phenomena, such as growth patterns, topography, and expanses of the sky. The garden in the series title, although not literal, does suggest a bounded space, protected and to some extent cultivated, along with a wildness that runs through it. The dream garden is an apt image for these paintings, a refuge for unexpected encounters with unfamiliar forms of life. Coinciding with his show at 57W57Arts, Mendelsohn be in a three-person exhibition at 490 Atlantic, beginning on January 14.

John Mendelsohn grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, and received a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from Rutgers University. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include the Walsh Art Gallery, Fairfield University; Kook Projects, New York; and Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn. His paintings have been shown at the Venice Biennale; Nordiska Kompanient, Stockholm, Sweden; MoMA P.S.1, New York; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Hallwalls, Buffalo; and the Wellesley College Museum. His exhibitions have been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, The New Criterion, The Huffington Post, Artnet, and dArt International Magazine.