(HILLSDALE, N.Y.) – “The Lonely Surfer,” a two-person show by artists Susan Meyer and Jeff Starr, goes on view at LABspace on Saturday, May 14, with a reception for the artists from 5 to 7pm. The exhibit runs through Saturday, June 4.
Susan Meyer and Jeff Starr, an artist-couple, share an interest in visual accumulation and vernacular imagery, with somewhat obsessive results. They will install their work at LABspace as you might find it in their overlapping studios, with an inevitable commingling of ideas and imagery.
The title, “The Lonely Surfer,” an instrumental by composer Jack Nitzsche, suggests a shared fascination with transcendence and the mundane. Random cultural sparks play a role in each artist’s work; sparks found in thrift stores, on the radio, or on the Internet. The title also conjures the artist in her or his studio as the lonely surfer of inspiration and creation.
Susan Meyer, who is predominately a sculptor, makes work that alludes to architecture, the figure, and landscape. Her pieces suggest overbuilt architectural concoctions: part shrine, part commune, part scholar’s rock, part disaster waiting to happen. She is interested in landscape and architecture as catalysts for our desires and aspirations.
Jeff Starr is a painter whose work is packed with imagery. One might say the work reflects the apparent increase in our daily visual-digital stimuli. Painted photographic images in the work are gleaned from popular sources: fashion magazines, album and CD covers, and obscured with an overlay of doodles using archival water-based ink pens.
Meyer and Starr live together in Hudson, N.Y.
LABspace was founded and is directed by the artist Susan Jennings. The gallery is dedicated to experiments in curation, exhibiting category-busting and/or materially surprising contemporary art, and hosting performance art, screenings, readings, and music that push the boundaries of categorization, participation and/or experience.
LABspace is located at 2642 NY Route 23 just west of NY Route 22 in Hillsdale, N.Y. Beginning on May 14, the gallery will be open Thursday and Friday, 1-5, and Saturdays 11 to 5, or by appointment via labspaceart@gmail.com.