In John Jacobsmeyer’s parallel reality, pop culture and art history collide with the backdrops of his suburban youth. In his third solo show at Gallery Poulsen, titled “Locus Colossus,” he offers new paintings and linocuts with these startling convergences. The show runs through Feb. 15 at the Denmark venue. (Jacobsmeyer was last featured on our site here.)
“[He] grew up in suburban communities where construction of the local highways and subdivisions left only oases of wood lot where he and other kids would build clubhouses out of scrap plywood and invent dangerous games involving tree climbing and firecrackers,” the gallery says. “The wood lot seemed to offer none of the transcendental inspiration that you’d find in Friedrich’s paintings or the metaphysical terror of Poe. But he slowly grew to see something powerful there in the banality of neglected nature, in a clearing among the trees or a rock outcropping that had a certain devious geometry. The creepy fiction of H.P. Lovecraft inspired him to see this. And it’s in the works of Max Klinger where such everyday absurdities become allegories.”
See more on the gallery’s site and the artist’s own page.
