RJ Messineo and Fragmentation

RJ Messineo, “Council of Troubles”, 2025, oil, panels and rare earth magnets on canvas, 100 x 144 inches

By EDWARD WAISNIS April 1, 2025

The choice of Gleaners as the title of the show knods to facets of French culture, from painting to film–Millet to Varda–with representations of what the term connotes for the Gauls, bucolic peasantry’s penchant for picking through the dregs. In RJ Messineo’s case, it addresses their compunction of constructing their paintings from a gathering of Luan plywood panels, not much larger than a coffee table book, after reside in the studio, accruing layers of paint, to then find their way into the finished works; settling after a series of moves akin to actions associated with a sliding puzzle. The riffing continues in plotting that is utilized in a manner akin to gameplay. The warmth of improvisation, transitioning from mind tease to satisfaction for the eye, is another aspect at ‘play’. The process is carried out by sandwiching the panels between two rare earth magnets the size of gold pieces that hold them temporarily in place to be fixed to their final situation with slathered paint (and, perhaps glue?).

RJ Messineo, Untitled, 2024, oil on panel, 16 x 12 inches
 

A small work, hanging in the open office area at the front of the gallery, is the sole representative of a particular strain of works that Messineo has become known for. Untitled, 2024, reprises the articulation between two layers. The uppermost one, an overlaid sheet of Luan smeared with earthy browns and oranges, is punctuated by variously-sized holes through which contrasting near-fluorescent shades are emitted from the layer beneath. For anyone who has done work around the house, or spent time in a wood-shop, the inevitabile need/use a hole saw is a bit of a revelation; the simple time-saving low-tech device can truly produce a sense of awe. Messineo has tapped into this rudimentary visually memorable experience turning it into a signature motif. One can conjecture if encountering ‘peep holes’, found in construction site plywood barriers, offered inspiration? These excavations provide counters to the bas-relief of the affixed magnets. The process, in which the painting is nearly allowed to build itself, is Messineo’s source material. *

RJ Messineo, “Council of Troubles” (detail), 2025, oil, panels and rare earth magnets on canvas, 100 x 144 inches

With previous work seeming to cull from Robert Motherwell’s Open series, down to replicating the somber tones, Messineo has hit their stride here with the startling candy shop colors (Pixy Stix inspired?) tuned to fluttering brusque brushwork that eschews defeness in favor of the concision of the power of the image, falling between Ab-Ex and staccato calligraphy. Monet’s sensibility, in it’s raw natural state, that is in turn passed through Joan Mitchell’s errant sophistication is Messineo’s forte. Lightness permeates their mark making.

RJ Messineo, History Painting, 2025, oil, panels and rare earth magnets on canvas, 101 x 141 inches

RJ Messineo, “This is not a composition, it’s a place where things are, as on a table”, 2025, oil, panels and rare earth magnets on canvas, 80 x 85 inches
 

The largest works History Painting and This is not a composition it’s a place where things are, as on a table, both 2025, are symphonies composed of and accumulation of multiple abutting panels sporting every manner of Messineo’s accumulated tactics. Bathed in bright colors, that at times go to a decorator’s palette, brash brushed, or sedately uninflected. The advent of small monochrome canvases, dotting the edges of both works, adds a new twist. Their vacuity they hark to a minimalist streak with evocations of Richter’s color charts breaking their constraints with a scale of multi-colored On Kawara minus the emblazoned dates.

RJ Messineo, “Burning Dot”, 2025, oil on canvas, 60 x 40 inches

RJ Messineo, “Mona Mona”, 2025, oil on canvas, 60 x 40 inches
 

Two vertical canvases of the same human scale, veer away from the main proceedings whilst adding ballast to the show overall. Burning Dot, 2025, the outlier in it’s gravity, due mostly to it’s dark delving in purples, blues and blacks with a shock of orange finds a way somewhere between Diebenkorn, Hodgkin and Kline. Mona Mona, 2025, might be read as a compendium of the wall enveloping works.

RJ Messineo, “The Literal and Unsymbolic Day, 2025, oil on canvas, 72 x 79 inches
 

The Literal and Unsymbolic Day and Earth Blue, both 2025, return to the main action, employing expressive panels against monochrome ones, on a somewhat smaller scale and playing with a shared methodology of surrounding ('locking') the monochrome in a way that transmutes them to the orderly center of impassioned storms. The technological held at bay by pure feeling.

RJ Messineo, “Earth Blue”, 2022-25, oil on canvas, 72 x 79 inches
 

I would place Messineo amongst the generation who are reinventing (reinvigorating) abstract painting as generational descendents of practitioners that emerged in the late 70s/early 80s (think: Bill Jensen and his contemporaries) and passed, via a continuum, through mature painters of our day, many of whom came out of what is colloquially referenced as the Williamsburg scene, meanwhile side-stepping blips of distraction like "Zombie Formalism". †

* Cited from the gallery’s press release.
† The term was coined by the late Walter Robinson in 2014 to denote purposely slap-dash work of the day that found a fervent, but short-lived, following amongst collectors.

RJ Messineo: The Gleaners
Canada
60 Lispenard Street, New York
February 28–April 12, 2025