Jesse Schlesinger

PRESS RELEASE

Frieze Los Angeles 2024 | Anthony Meier | Booth D6

Anthony Meier is pleased to announce a solo presentation of new works by Jesse Schlesinger at Frieze Los Angeles 2024. The gallery will feature a series of sculptures by the artist alongside several works on paper. Based in San Francisco, Jesse Schlesinger (b. 1979) is a multidisciplinary visual artist working in sculpture, site-specific installation, drawing, and photography. Schlesinger’s art is deeply rooted in his love of natural forms, the accidental beauty of stone and wood as they are transformed by the powers of growth, erosion, and flame. While many of his materials possess personal significance insofar as they derive from sites the artist knows, we receive them as abstractions, signifiers of our general belonging to a material world that is both organic and inorganic, active and inert.

Schlesinger has received formal training in ceramics, various processes of print-making, bronze casting, and more, all of which are essential to his practice. Schlesinger’s particular passion and artistry in woodworking relates to his upbringing as a second-generation carpenter, having been trained with a focus on traditional craftsmanship. Schlesinger cares deeply about his material sources, particularly in regards to the discarded and recycled wood, often redwoods native to the Bay Area, that he salvages for his sculptures. Schlesinger celebrates the chance opportunities that arise in implementing found materials into his work. Cast in bronze or perhaps skillfully coated in a glossy enamel paint, Schlesinger transforms his medium into gestures of environmental reflection.

This new body of work highlights the diversity of mediums implemented by the artist, from salvaged cedar, salvaged redwood, enamel paint on fiberboard, to ceramics and stone. Pops of vibrant colors, including canary yellows and deep royal blues, balance and contrast against the organic materials. Alongside the sculptures, Schlesinger explores the fusing of ceramic against sandpaper. These works are the result of a process that is innate to the artist’s practice, as they are created with the materials Schlesinger uses to sharpen his woodcarving knives. These two dimensional works are rich with texture and movement.

This presentation at Frieze Los Angeles coincides with the artist’s forthcoming unveiling of a public art project in San Francisco in the spring of 2024. The project will display a large grouping of Schlesinger’s sculptures and will span the intersection of Judah Street and La Playa Street in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. This is a permanent installation, funded and managed by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Visit Anthony Meier at Booth D6 at Frieze Los Angeles 2024 to experience Schlesinger's new works on display.