Adrienne Elyse Meyers: There’s something in the silence
@ NEIU Fine Art Center Gallery
5500 N St. Louis Ave, Building E, Chicago, IL 60625
Opening Friday, November 7th, from 5PM - 8PM
On view through Friday, November 28th
There’s something in the silence that lingers, that hovers in the air, that settles like dew on the grass. There’s something in the stillness in the dark of a room before the lights switch on. There’s something in the eye of the storm, between the impact of its swirling walls. There’s something in the late afternoon, when light from the windows slowly goes out, and the coolness falls. There’s something in this silence, doing our best to keep the fear at bay.
These paintings offer glimpses into daily life, reflecting on the sweetness of sapphic intimacy, of life in the city, and of a sense of awe or strangeness that seeps through the everyday as it is lived and remembered. They engage with stillness and silence, finding moments of pause, where time and space seem to sit suspended. A lover stretches out in the morning light, charcoal embers glow at the end of the evening, smoke from fireworks lingers over the lakefront, shadows flicker on the wall, and blue light from the screen covers the room as night falls. Images featuring the artist’s girlfriend produce the sensation of film stills, suspended between voyeurism and intimacy as they move through an apartment, along the lakefront, and around Chicago.
Throughout her practice, Meyers draws on her religious rural upbringing in the woods of East Texas, teasing out senses of awe and fear within otherwise banal scenes of daily life. In her work, catastrophizing, apprehension, and precarity live alongside comfort, rest, and the tenderness of sapphic love. Scenes in soft focus are presented at a human scale that invites viewers to enter each image, and underpaintings in reds, pinks, purples, and oranges peek through thin washes of oil paint, establishing a sense of warmth and closeness. There’s something in the silence brings together figures and spaces with a distinctive warm—almost fleshy—color palette that establishes an atmospheric cohesion throughout the exhibition.
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Tags: Adrienne Elyse Meyers, Albany Park, Chicago Art, neiu art gallery, NEIU Fine Art Center Gallery, There's something in the silence
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