Jo Messer: Speed Stick

It begins, as many indulgences do, with restraint. A tight, almost obsessive palette: a bloody magenta edged with deep purples that feel like midnight. Light arrives not politely but in flashes, sometimes raw from the canvas, sometimes swelling and receding like a whisper.

Then the surfaces thicken. Lines gather, drag, and knot. They tangle like fishnets or the delicate snarl of knotted fine gold chains. They build into something dense and restless, a mood that vibrates between atmosphere and flesh.

Out of that swirling energy, bodies, or fragments of them, emerge. A foot, heavy and declaratory. A nude torso twisting through the paint, muscular and straining. A curved back, soft and fleeting.

And then, the fish heads. Eyes bulging everywhere, slippery, and a little grotesque. This tips the show into a kind of food porn, just not the kind you'll find on Instagram. It’s a feast, just not one arranged for easy consumption or the glossy satisfactions of display.

All of it’s steeped in art history. Turner’s burning storms at sea. Michelangelo’s sibyls from the Sistine Ceiling. The weight of the colossal sculpture of ancient Rome. The back of a Renoir bather is outlined, absorbed, and smeared into the work.

Nothing is cleaned up, and nothing is made pretty. Flesh, food, and bodies all tangled in vivid brushstrokes that leave you hungry, slightly undone, and aware that what nourishes us is rarely pristine.

Jo Messer (b. 1991 in Los Angeles) grew up in New York City and lives and works in Brooklyn. She studied at Cooper Union and earned her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2017. Her mother, filmmaker Eleanor Gaver, was waiting tables at the Great Jones Cafe, a gathering place for East Village artists, when she met Jo's father, the artist Sam Messer. Her sensibility is shaped by the art, film, kitchens, and tables that have long held the restless appetites of downtown NYC.