Sam Messer ‘s obsession with typewriters began in a collaboration with the author Paul Auster but evolved as Messer began using the typewriter to explore how language is changing. In the paintings displayed here, Messer draws from the history of painting and contemporary issues to improvise on the underlying formal structure of the typewriter. Oil, acrylic, and spray paint are used to rework and alter the surface of the canvas until the typewriter transforms into a portrait. The three-dimensional layers of his materials along with the flattened perspective, intertwine with each other, creating the illusion that the paint melts at the edges, while some of the typewriters tend to lose their form completely. The artist uses formal abstraction and his knowledge of the history of improvisational artmaking to create these works.

Sam Messer (born 1955, NY) was part of the neo-expressionist movement in New York in the early 1980s. He holds a BFA from The Cooper Union (1976) and received an MFA from Yale University (1981). He was the Associate Dean of the Yale School of Art for twelve years and a Senior Art Critic at Yale for twenty-five years. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in many public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. He has been the recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Louis Tiffany Foundation Grant, the Engelhard Award, and a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn NY.

Allouche Benias

Visiting Hours:

Tuesday – Friday

11am – 19pm

Saturday

11am – 17pm

Kanari 1, Kolonaki

Athens, Greece

10671