Joel Mesler wants you to watch out for the Coke birds

Installation view, Joel Mesler at Lévy Gorvy Dayan.

By DAVID JAGER July 19, 2024

Joel Mesler’s new painting and sculpture show at Lévy Gorvy Dayan  starts underwater. The entire room is wallpapered with the refracted patterns we’ve all seen in backyard pools, shimmering threads of light woven into a loose net against a cool teal background. Pool parties, specifically from his childhood, form an essential part of the Mesler mythology. In this installation, ostensibly on the pools bottom, there are beach balls on plinths labelled with words spelled out in bright gold mylar balloon letters. Gold mylar balloons are another signature Mesler element. Here they spell out the words ‘Love’, ‘Life’, and ‘Mom’. 

Feelings form an essential part of Mesler’s practice, and in this front room installation you practically drown in them. The title of the show “Kitchens are Good Rooms to Cry in”, says as much. A practice borne of his long confrontation with his traumatic and addictive past, Mesler finds his way into them with shiny paintings, crafty jokes, frequent nods to his rabbi, and lots of patterned wallpaper. 

I’m in the front room when Mesler himself surprises me in person. He offers to show me the rest of the show, which takes up all of Lévy Gorvy Dayan's handsome Edwardian mansion turned gallery. But he wants to take me to the secret clown room first. 

“I built this secret clown room, see” he says with a boyish grin “in case someone came to my show and didn’t like it. Then later, if they heard that they missed a secret clown room, they’d have to come back and see the show a second time. Because who can resist …a secret clown room?” 

It’s a good question. Tall and gangly, with a loping gait and sandy blond surfer hair, Mesler opens a sliding door and motions me to follow him with a mischievous head shake. I enter a mid-sized rectangular room with slate walls and six clown portraits spaced along the walls. They strike me as halfway between Walt Kuhn and Chuck Olberstein, neither morbid nor kitsch. A giant pair of red and yellow clown shoes sit at the feet of one of them. Mesler can’t stop laughing to himself.  

Installation view, Joel Mesler at Lévy Gorvy Dayan . 

Clowning is a large part of Mesler practice. A kind of “gee shucks, I’m only kidding” hapless goofiness that speaks to a lot of the themes in his work: majestic failure, beautiful embarrassment, awkward feelings, Jewishness. In a way a lot of Mesler’s work seems to be a resurrection of the Jewish art of comedic self-deprecation, but through a lens that seems sunnier and more contemporary. The vibe is more millennial hippie than sixties hip. Call him the painterly Judd Apatow for the Phish generation. 

“Let’s go to the disco room” Mesler says. He takes me into a large square room with dark green jungle leaf wallpaper, lit by a large hanging disco ball. The effect is maximalist, but not enough to dim the large bright canvases atop them, which look like glossy half parodies of motivational posters. They feature landscapes of what might be forested Ski Slopes or simply large mounds of Candy and cocaine. One of them is resplendent with a rainbow and the words “It’s fine” spelled out in melted chocolate.  

Or is it excrement? Mesler points out white powdery birds in flight in the blue skies over the mountains. They look like gulls but also suspiciously look like lines of the devil’s dandruff artfully chopped to look like gulls. I point to them with a questioning look. 

“Oh” he says with a half grin. “Those are the coke birds. They show up at 3:00 a.m. You know when you’re having a great night, and you think maybe you should go to bed? That’s when the coke birds arrive, and you have to decide whether or not to heed their call. They could make the evening better, or...”

“Make everything turns to shit?” I volunteer

Mesler guffaws, clapping  his hands in boyish glee.

“He gets it!” he shouts “He understands!”

“Let’s go to my office” he says, continuing the tour.

He leads me up the grand staircase, where a flock of coke birds, sculpted in clay or polymer, are affixed in flight along the wall. He also points to four semi-inflated balloons spelling out his name, “Joel” lying forlorn on the landing of the first flight of the stairs.  

“That’s me, when I’m feeling half deflated” he says. “When I’m not sure if I have enough self-confidence to go on.”  

Installation view, Joel Mesler at Lévy Gorvy Dayan.

We arrive in a giant second floor room with a desk set behind a sofa, armchairs and a coffee table. Affixed to the wall behind is a painting of Mesler’s Rabbi under a giant painted rainbow. The word “JOY”, spelled out with fat gold balloon letters hangs from the ceiling. Mesler has used this configuration of lounging furniture and rabbis before. The social workers of their communities, an adjunct to actual therapy, it makes sense that he would put them together. Joy, is, of course, the big take away. Whatever happens, be joyous. 

This portrait is flanked by vitrines with drawings that veer away from the comical and into some pen and ink worthy of Ben Shahn or Raymond Pettibon. We’re back to the Schtetl, exploring the tenuous connection between the Ashkenaz of Europe and the Jews of New York. It explains the vintage Judaica- assorted framed drawings and paintings- shoved into corners, giving the feel of an actual Rabbi’s Shul office. It seems open for business.

The next room on the second floor is devoted to the gold mylar balloon paintings. Balloons do, in fact, appear to be a major theme of the show. They spell out words like “prayer” against backdrops of sky that range from serene to tempestuous. Also, “Courage”, “Ecstasy”, “Vessel” and, of course, “Feelings”. 

The word “vessel” hints at what he’s aiming at. In Judaism, humans are merely vessels animated by divine breath. God breathes life into Adam through his nostrils. Mesler, using the language of party balloons and disco balls, is delving into some heavy Talmudic stuff. We might just be some delicate mylar balloons that require a little divine breath now and then. 

Mesler’s popularity hinges on his embrace of precisely this type of profundity applied to human frailty, dressed up as shiny promise and glamorous fun. It’s what makes him so likeable. Who hasn’t found themselves at a point of decision before dawn, full of confidence, and made a terrible call? Mesler speaks to these moments in the human dramedy, where we aim for pleasure and triumph and wind up, well, crying in the kitchen. 

On view at Lévy Gorvy Dayan  through July 27, 2024. WM