Sandra Gering Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of large-scale watercolors by James Meyer from 2 June through 8 July 2005. This is Meyer's fourth solo exhibition at the gallery.

In his paintings and watercolors, James Meyer presents a world full of contradictions and juxtapositions, offering layers of meaning and possible interpretations. This indeterminate nature gives Meyer's work a sense of palpable tension, belied by the (seemingly) lighthearted nature of many of his subjects.

Several of Meyer's most recent watercolors feature children on amusement park rides juxtaposed with images of people in third world countries. In Not Untitled, a boy drives a go-cart while to one side of him, white-robed men in a desert landscape attempt to scale an embankment. Are the men aspiring to this world of extraneous pleasures? Or observing with detachment the elaborate lengths we go to in order to fill our time? In either case, the boy is oblivious to them, wrapped up in his own fantasy of being behind the wheel, in control.

Meyer's work often addresses the human desire to decode and control the world around us. And isn't that desire one of the main incentives to play? As children pretend, explore, and take risks in their games, they unconsciously attempt to figure out the world and their place in it. The titles of works in the exhibition — Not Untitled, Songs of Minimalism, Contemporary Vision — hint at a commentary about the role of art in our search for understanding.

A full-color catalogue will be available, featuring images of works from 1991 to 2005 and essays by David Shapiro and Sarah Davis.