Meliksetian | Briggs is pleased to present 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