A Guide to Nolan Meyer’s Body of Work
Our first artist resident Nolan Meyer came into this opportunity with lots of excitement and energy and channeled it all into his practice. It was an incredible time for us at feverdream, as not only were we graced with such fascinating work but also with a peek at his practice and what his mindset is when it comes to creating his often very lively compositions. With his 2 month stint at feverdream finished, we thought it right to leave a more critical guide to the body of work that Nolan executed while here.
Each work in the carousel are ordered chronologically in the order that he painted it in. It’s important to note that all these works as of right now are untitled, and I will be giving them a descriptive nickname for clarity’s sake [we now have titles which have been edited in!].
The first painting [titled i love smelling melting plastic] he made at the residency was the “minion” painting. This humorous work depicts a minion with a suburban background digitally interwoven with scene of an alleyway fire from Source engine—on top of all of this is a sticker of a little mischievous Sanrio character (the originators of Hello Kitty). The composition is seemingly made up of these 4 quadrants: the minion, suburbia, the fire, and the Sanrio character. The viewer can obviously draw connections to suburbia and the minion or the minion and the fire and make a read based on that—perhaps maybe the minions are a symbol of the destruction of civilization. Nolan himself offered that the initial inspiration for painting the minion was born out of a sort of ironic fascination with them and he made this painting thinking about the marketing of art and how it can be sold as a cheap commodity. The minion and Sanrio’s Hello Kitty being good example of how art can be designed to be sold easily at high volume and low cost—the sticker format being clearly indicative of this thought. The minion is an especially good example of this pervasiveness he mentions. Think about how often you see this character online where it has nothing to do with Dreamworks’ marketing.
“I have a body of work that I have been working on that relates digital culture to the history of painting.”
The next work [titled profile picture collection] he made was the “Sailor Moon” piece which has that similar maximalist feel as the previous work. Working from back to front, he rendered an image of the musician Yung Lean submerged in a bathtub, layered over that: a tiger hiding in foliage and a large empty balaclava. And finally overtop every element Nolan painted a digitally embossed line drawing of the main character and namesake of the anime “Sailor Moon.” What immediately comes to mind when looking at this painting is concealment, and camouflage. The balaclava references the concealment of identity, Yung Lean is concealed in water, the tiger in foliage— Sailor Moon requires a little more digging. A consistent theme among Nolan’s work is how widely the work opens up to any audience member who has knowledge about the semiotics at play. It becomes a mile deep for an inch wide portion of the audience. Sometimes work seems less accessible and more exclusive and Nolan can sometimes revel in that mystery: he reassures the viewer that there is no right answer when it comes to analyzing his work. All that being said, in the anime “Sailor Moon,” the main character disguises herself among her classmates in a school uniform, but when she transforms into her “superhero” form she dons a crown and a more fantastical outfit—similar to Clark Kent and Superman. This also draws to mind the use of camouflage by predators vs. the use of camouflage by prey. A tiger hides within the environment from prey, whereas a zebra hides within the pack. Finally, the work itself references concealment and camouflage in a meta way by the way all the elements themselves are obscured within the layering that is happening.
Following that piece we are given the “Jerma” painting [titled auto defenestration incident nine hundred and eighty five]; the figure leaping out of a window. This painting sticks out immediately because it lacks the maximalist style of the previous two and instead is a painting of reality—not a digital space. Nolan was thinking about the Belgian painter Michaël Borremans. A subdued and subtle artist, he paints dark and foreboding scenes of people in unusual circumstances within the style of historical portraiture like Diego Velazquez. In this painting there is something strangely calm about a depiction of someone defenestrating. And when dissecting each element in this more scarce composition it becomes evident how out of place things seem to be. The lighting seems theatrical, unlike how a normal room is usually lit. The structure of the room the figure is in seems impossible; how is there a door right next to that window that reveals a dark “outside”? What even is outside of that window? How high off the ground is that window if there is a door right next to it? Was he thrown or did he jump? The work raises lots of questions to the viewer. Those in the know, so to speak, might know that it is a screen cap of a Twitch streamer named Jerma. Jerma was streaming himself living in a makeshift house playing the part of a character from the Sims and doing whatever his viewers told him to do. When all references of this production are removed and it is reduced to a still painted image the result is eerie. Among the other works in this body of work, it serves as one of the two moments of reprieve.
“I have been looking at how masculinity interacts with digital culture.”
The fourth painting is the “Divine Light” painting [titled savior point]. This painting is seemingly the most exclusive painting not only because of its maximalist, loud nature but because of its specific references. Nolan jokingly referred to this piece as his Halloween painting as its themes revolve around death, the body, abject horror, etc. He’s painted a scene figure firing at a sinewy monster hung on a barbed wire fence from the video game Silent Hill, an intestinal looking pink border with the words “Divine Light Severed” from the game Cruelty Squad, a first person view model of a fleshy gun from the game Scorn, topped with Boo from the Mario series. This painting is weird and challenging. The text and the figure being hung as if being crucified makes the work seem vaguely biblical and monolithic while the appliqué of Boo neutralizes that read at the same time. Boo also seems to function as a way to call attention to how death is talked about in children’s media and that he is being applied overtop a gruesome scene like a band-aid. Nolan referenced this work as being his favorite piece he made during his residence.
Finally, we have the “ghillie suit” painting [titled at the table without any youtube videos]. The second reprieve within this series and an excellent piece to round out body of work. It’s a painting of a strange scene like the “Jerma” piece, it calls to mind the ideas of camouflage again like his “Sailor Moon” painting, and it utilizes some of the irony and humor we see in the “Divine Light” and “minion” pieces. A ghillie suit is something used by hunters and the military to hide in foliage, yet here the figure is presented in “broad daylight” enjoying a glass of coca-cola; something that seems like it might be impossible to do whilst wearing such a suit. The painting has beautiful moments of painterliness such as how the shag rug is rendered or how the shades meet the white wall in the room. There’s also an economy of mark; in some areas Nolan uses a few simple brushstrokes to convey exactly what he is presenting—a picture frame or a fold in a recliner, for example.
