Stefan Meier: One Million Galaxies

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Over the Influence is thrilled to present One Million Galaxies, an exhibition of LA-based artist Stefan Meier’s most recent artworks on view in Hong Kong from December 1 – 24, 2022 in Hong Kong.

In his second solo exhibition with the gallery, the artist continues to explore his lexicon that juxtaposes text, cartoonlike imagery, symbols, and anatomy upon the canvas surfaces.

New for this series, canvases are hand-woven together from t-shirts or soaked in pigments to variously offer rich areas of color or an almost tie-dyed and faded ground for the compositions.  Much like the symbols and imagery Meier depicts, the materiality of the canvases themselves reinforce old and worn with fresh and new; the woven, textured and raw, with smooth and crisp.  The conflation of time and space through materials and imagery simultaneously evoke nostalgia with discovery, Meier postulates the artworks of One Million Galaxies to explore concepts of multiple universes existing simultaneously.

Meier recalls being a child and studying the ground closely, noticing that there was a whole world existing beneath our feet, and across the sky. This concept has followed the artist into adulthood, and he is constantly fascinated with the worlds that exist parallel, and within the one he inhabits. This is where the exhibition’s title originates. One Million Galaxies with each piece existing as its own galaxy. Glyphs of amphibians and fish, organs and skeletons, eyes, water, stars, sun, and daisies are variously juxtaposed within each composition, and invariable are complemented by the most prevalent visual component of One Million Galaxies, the butterfly.

Interestingly, keystones of Meier’s iconography are intrinsically connected to the cosmos as the primary naming system for the nebulae and star clusters we see in the Earth’s night sky. The butterflies that punctuate Meier’s canvases, echo the Butterfly Nebula within our Milky Way galaxy, which sits roughly 3,800 light years away and emits its ultraviolet radiance across a wingspan that covers over 3 light years.

This butterfly is a cross-cultural symbol of rebirth and resurrection and a metaphor for transformation and hope. Building depicts a brilliant array of species interspersed with lightly inked silhouettes on raw canvas. As if fading into another realm or captured in a moment between time and space, this work alludes to triumph of the spirit over the physical.

Meier explores these various worlds and universe through his recognizable aesthetic, combining identifiable images from mass media with elements of the natural world.

The richly pigmented bursts of green, yellow and oranges on the surface of ABC may conjure fire and early elements of lush vegetation and solar reflections of a butterfly’s daytime migration. The 3 x 3 grid of the winged pairs come to become a cluster of 21, or a kaleidoscope, as they come down at night to gather as seen in the large horizontal painting, Butterflies. The aqua, purple, and deep blue hues reverberates with brilliant hues like those emitted from the glowing gasses of the twin unparallel spiral Butterfly Galaxies, about 60 million light years away.

Viewers looking at the pieces of One Million Galaxies might recognize something of themselves within them, while simultaneously drawn out into an unfamiliar realm and into undiscovered, space.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Stefan Meier moved to Los Angeles in 2015 after studying fashion studies and graphic design at Columbia college in Chicago. His background in fashion and design is clear throughout his self taught fine art practice. Meier’s first opportunity in Los Angeles was designing graphics and textiles for Bernhard Willhelm, with whom he has since done 8 collections with. He has collaborated with creatives such as David Lachapelle, Darren Romanelli, and K.B. Lee on various creative endeavors.