Linn Meyers

Early life and travels

Meyers was born in Washington, D.C., where she lived until she was 17, at which time she moved to Paris, France. In 1986 she moved back to the U.S. to attend The Cooper Union in New York City, where she graduated in 1990 with a BFA. In 1991 Meyers moved to Oakland, California, to pursue an MFA at The California College of the Arts in Oakland California (now located in San Francisco.) After completing her master's degree (1993), Meyers returned to New York City. In 1997 she spent several months living and working in New Haven, Connecticut, before relocating to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she lived for 4 years. Meyers returned to her native Washington, D.C in 2002.

Work

Meyers uses repetitive applications of line and color to draw on a variety of surfaces including paper, vellum, mylar, and gallery walls. "Her drawings tend to grow from themselves, each successive line determining the next." Each piece begins with a single mark – a line that traces a pre-determined framework of circles, or a simple singular gesture. This first stroke defines the direction in which the entire image will evolve – each line a direct response to the mark made just before. These marks amass to create an image, which is both still and moving, ordered and chaotic, both pointing toward perfection and also wholly imperfect.

Meyers' works "function like a map of sorts, charting time and space." At the core of the work is the artist's own relationship to time: learning how to move back and forth between natural time, measured time, and subjective time. Meyers has said, “my works are records of a defined period of time, and in that particular way they are not abstract. They are a form of realism and narrative.” “Indeed Meyers’ work does not erase the artist’s hand; by contrast it is the most direct result of her body movements in a given time period and thereby is a trace of that very personal experience.”

Installation

Meyers has been making large, site-specific wall drawings in museums and galleries since 2000. These projects require a great deal of endurance and involve drawing in the space over the course of days, sometimes weeks, accumulating lines into dense and intricate compositions. This scale allows Meyers to respond to architectural spaces and magnifies the wholly committed performativity of her process. On Meyers' exhibition for The Hammer Museum, Senior Curator Anne Ellegood wrote, “the sense of being present while viewing the work is also amplified at this larger scale, allowing viewers to experience the work not just visually but also physically. To see a wall drawing is to be surrounded by it and to feel oneself to be part of the work.” Many of Meyers’ wall drawings are created with an awareness of their ultimate impermanence.

Exhibitions

Meyers has exhibited in venues that include The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Thatcher Projects, New York City; The Frick Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; G Fine Art, Washington D.C.; The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, Japan; The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York City; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., The Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; Paris Concret, Paris, France; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Sandra Gering Inc., New York City.

Selected exhibitions

Here is what I know is true, Sandra Gering Inc., New York, NY (solo); Geometric: Line, Form, Subversion, Curator’s Office, Washington, DC; Intersections@5, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; Bye Bye Old City: The Last Picture Show, Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, PA; New Abstraction, Traywick Contemporary, Berkley CA;

Blue Study, Academy Art Museum, Easton, Maryland (solo); Huntington Museum, Huntington, West Virginia (solo); National Drawing Invitational, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Arkansas; Dialogues: Recent Acquisitions of the Sheldon Museum of Art, The Sheldon Museum, Lincoln, NE; The Intuitionists, The Drawing Center, NYC, NY;

Rhapsody, Linn Meyers and Elena del Rivero, Gering + Lopez Gallery, New York City

We're Not All Here Because We're Not All There, Tecoah Bruce Gallery, CCA, Oakland, California; Art on Paper The 42nd Exhibition, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Linn Meyers: The Adjacent Possible, G Fine Art, Washington, D.C. (solo); Every now. And again. The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (solo); a very particular moment, American University Museum at the Katzen Center, Washington, D.C. (solo); Pressing Ideas, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Multiplicity, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

at the time being, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (solo); Touch, Paris Concret, Paris France; Ink, Inc., Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas, Texas; Prints By Gallery Artists, Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; On/Off The Grid, Irvine Contemporary, Washington, D.C.; Very Very Large Drawings, Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Here Today, The University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland (solo); Fine Lines, Reyes + Davis, Washington, D.C.; Superfine, Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York City; Ink! Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York City; Curvalinear, Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Marking Time, Works by Miriam Cabessa and Linn Meyers, Lyons Wier + Ortt, New York City; The Space Between, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, California; Touch, Bus-dori Project Space, Tokyo, Japan; International Print Exhibition, USA & Japan (traveling), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art

G Fine Art, Washington, D.C. (solo); Currents:New Acquisitions, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Ink!, Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Etch-A-Sketch, The Drawing Show, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Larchmont, New York; Between the Lines, Maryland Art Place, M.A.P, Baltimore, Maryland; New Prints/Winter, International Print Center, New York City; Walking the Line, Stamp Student Union Gallery, University of Maryland, Maryland

Re-Defined, The Corcoran Gallery Of Art, Washington, D.C.; Street Scenes: Art and Elements, Projects for D.C., Washington D.C.; DEM Contemporary, Los Angeles, Aligning with Abstract LA

Margaret Thatcher Projects New York City (solo); Full Circle, Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Margaret Thatcher Projects New York City (solo); D.C. Now, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia

Selected collections

Meyers' work is in public and private collections including those of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, California; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Wynn Kramarsky, New York City; The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain Connecticut; The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Westmoreland Pennsylvania; The Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD; the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE; and the Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington WV.

Awards

Meyers has received numerous awards, including a Pollock Krasner Award, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and four DC Commission on the Arts Fellowships. She has been Artist in Residence at The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, The Millay Colony, The Tamarind Institute, The Bemis Institute, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

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