Artist: Meg Cranston

Meliksetian | Briggs presents Organizing Principles, a new group of paintings by Meg Cranston, marking her sixth solo show with the gallery. The new work continues Cranston’s engagement with contemporary culture and society, color theory, aesthetic and art historical positions combined with her witty and irreverent approach to art making.

Throughout my work, I have been interested in the relationship between social, political, and industrial organization and organizing principles in art. For example, many industries/businesses/governments have a vertical hierarchal structure. Many (most) paintings also use vertical-centered hierarchy as an organizing compositional principle. My work Organizational Chart (Come and Get Your Love) has a horizontal structure without hierarchy. Who’s in charge?

Color in the built world is also highly organized by industry, primarily per the seasonal color forecasts of the Pantone Corporation that most manufacturers globally use. I have collected those Pantone colors for many years. To disrupt Pantone’s authority, I’ve combined colors from various seasons. Per Pantone, a red from 2016 should not harmonize well with a blue from 2020 but I believe they can. I suppose I believe artists need not follow fashion; instead, they should create it.

The work 23 Hours Straight is structured vertically and horizontally like 23 garments hanging in a closet. It isn’t my closet, but theoretically, it is a closet circa 2010-2020. The colors are fashion colors from that period.

Radiator has a radiating concentric structure like the earth. The earth isn’t round; it is an ellipsoid, which, poetically, to me, is very different.

Business Reply is structured as a grid based on the design of subscription cards that fall out of magazines. When they fall out, I have trouble tossing them. They want me to reply.

Most of us spend a lot of time looking at horizontal screens -the computer, the TV etc. TV news often shows things falling from the sky and piles of rubble. That inspired the work Everybody Must Get Stoned.

For many years, I went to exhibitions with my longtime friend and former teacher, critic/artist Jeremy Gilbert Rolfe. Jeremy’s complaint was often that all the paintings in the show were the same size and proportions as if plucked from a shelf. The sizes of the paintings in this exhibition are not standardized, nor were they entirely predetermined. I painted most of them on unstretched canvas, so like paintings from the New York School (Pollock, Kline, Frankenthaler), the exact size was not predetermined but happened in the process of painting.

Meg Cranston, October 2024

Meg Cranston (b. 1960, Baldwin, NY) received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts and her BA from Kenyon College. She has received numerous awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, J. Paul Getty Community Foundation Artist Grant, Architectural Foundation of American Art in Public Places Award and is currently the Chair of Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles.

Cranston has been exhibiting internationally since 1988. Early exhibitions include curator Paul Schimmel’s seminal 1992 exhibition Helter Skelter at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (catalog) and the 1993 Biennale di Venezia / Venice Biennale (cat.). Solo exhibitions include the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Gund Gallery, Kenyon College, Ohio. Kunstverien Heilbronn, Germany, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Neuer Aachener Kunst­verein, Aachen, Artspace, Auckland (catalog) and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Group exhibitions in the past few years include, among others, Class Reunion, MUMOK / Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, This Brush for Hire, ICA / Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, an exhibition which she also co-curated with John Baldessari, Post-Studio, Museo Jumex / Jumex Collection, Mexico City, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles - A Fiction at the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo and the MAC / Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France (cat.), L’ image volée curated by Thom­as Demand at the Fondazione Prada, Milan (cat.), and L.A. Exuberance, Los Angeles County Museum of Art / LACMA.

Cranston is the author of several books including More Than You Wanted to Know About John Baldessari Volumes 1 and 2 with Hans Ulrich Obrist and has published numerous essays on art.

Cranston’s work is included in major collections worldwide including, among others, the Museum of Con­temporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles Coun­ty Museum of Art, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.