Andrew Sendor and linn meyers
by David S. Rubin
Make Room, Los Angeles, California
Exhibition continues through October 19, 2024
October 19, 2024
Andrew Sendor, “Salome’s Mosaic of Hope,” 2024, oil on matte white Plexiglas, mahogany shelf, painting, 11 1/2 x 15”.
All images courtesy of Make Room Gallery, Los Angeles.
Although Andrew Sendor is a figurative painter working in a hyperrealist style and linn meyers focuses on geometric abstract drawings, the artists do share a common methodology. Both engage constructed installations that are carefully staged and calculated.
Sendor specializes in creating paintings in series that capture emotional and psychologically stirring moments in self-scripted plays. These are presented in a manner that is at once theatrical and intimate. Using a thin brush and working on a small scale, the artist bases his imagery on scenes enacted by performers. The paintings in “Salome & Solvej, Apollo & Farne” are displayed in custom-designed frames, some of them shown like photographic keepsakes on shelves and pedestals. The walls of the gallery space are painted in dark shades of blue and red, and the floors are covered in blue and green carpeting, which makes the space feel more like a theater lounge than a gallery. All of this is accompanied by a soundtrack of a woman reading the play’s script.
Andrew Sendor, “Farne in Salome’s treehouse with Vör, Eir, & Magni,“ 2024,
oil on matte whie Plexiglas, walnut wood, in tiger maple artist’s frame, 30 x 24”.
Meyers is known for intricate geometric abstractions drawn on vintage graph paper. For her site-specific installation “Infinity Loop,” located in the gallery’s special project space, she has adorned all four walls and two doors with drawn enlargements of graph paper patterns. Over this she mounts several framed graph paper drawings from the past decade at varying heights, so as to call attention to the architecture of the space.
linn meyers, “Infinity Loop,” installation view, 2024 at Make Room Gallery, Los Angeles.
Sendor’s play is a coming-of-age story centered on Salome, a young ballet prodigy who moves in with her aunt after witnessing violent criminal activity by her father. Living in Denmark, she finds solace in a treehouse, which becomes her sacred space, and befriends Solvej, Apollo, and Farne, fellow students at a ballet academy. Disillusioned by the academy’s strict regimentation, the four youths flee, embarking on a cycling journey of self-discovery and independence. In several of the paintings, the teenagers are shown in transcendent moments of awe and wonder while in others, Sendor depicts nature scenes that inspire them.
Most of the portraits are monochromatic, rendered in a frigid shade of blue that recalls the work of the Austrian-Irish painter Gottfried Helnwein, and similarly lends them an air of ethereality. The delicacy of the soft-edged brushwork and spotlighting of faces have affinities with historical figures such as Georges de la Tour (1593-1652). This is particularly evident in “Farne in Salome’s treehouse with Vör, Eir, & Magni,” where a young man (played by the artist’s son) examines a tubular object as his face is illuminated by a burning candle.
Andrew Sendor, “Solvej in her treehouse with the effects of the Illulissa Fjord,"
2023, oil on matte white Plexiglas, sapele wood in tiger maple artist’s frame, 47 3/8 x 36”.
In the inspired “Solvej in her treehouse with the effects of the Illulissa Fjord,” Sendor has poignantly reinterpreted Caspar David Friedrich’s “Woman at a Window” (1822), which features an adult woman seen from behind as she contemplates nature and the universe through an open window. Sendor’s scene is more emotionally charged, as the young girl is enveloped by bright light, and we view her at much closer range. Due to her young age, we also can infer that she is filled with anticipation and wonder about the future.
Sendor takes a variety of approaches in his representations of nature. In his depictions of sky and ocean, he divides the compositions into quadrants, symbolically alluding to the four seasons, the points of a compass, and the phases of the moon. In “Solvej admires the eagle’s freedom and begins to imagine an escape from the ballet academy,” a portrait of Solvej with a contemplative expression is superimposed over clear blue cloudy skies, as if she is spiritually immersed in their vastness. “Salome’s Mosaic of Hope” is a small painting of green foliage installed on a shelf that, on the other hand, was shot at close range, which calls attention to the beauty and delicacy of plant life.
linn meyers, “Untitled,” 2024, acrylic ink and colored pencil on vintage graph paper, 11 x 8”.
Meyers also explores micro/macrocosmic relationships by contrasting original graph paper patterns with oversized depictions of them that she scales and fits to an actual room. Filled with lively compositions of swirling lines and clustered dots that reverberate like sound waves, her recent drawings are visually potent on their own terms. Yet, by repurposing them as sections of a new site-specific installation, meyers has expanded the conversation. Here, the term ‘infinity’ in her title refers not only to its obvious reference to the cosmos, but to the idea that systemic art (and her reliance on graph paper) can yield infinite compositional possibilities. Considered within this context, the installation reminds us that an artist’s work is never done.
