Venvi Art Gallery is pleased to present Beyond the Lost Garden, Mark Messersmith’s fourthsolo exhibition with our gallery. Mark Messersmith creates stunningly beautifuland vibrant paintings depicting North Florida’s flora and fauna. Through intricatelayering of subject matter, Messersmith gives viewers a seemingly endlessscenery to explore the dense, tangled, and fragile natural world, as it and itsinhabitants desperately try to survive. Join us during the second Friday of September on September 8th, for our opening reception of Mark Messersmith’s solo exhibit, Beyond the Lost Garden! Come by Venvi Art Gallery to enjoy charcuterie and wine, music, and incredible works of art – you can even meet the artist himself!Messersmith’s enchantingpaintings not only captivate the viewer but also address difficult, often dark themesabout humanity. In these paintings, Messersmith uses brilliant complementarycolors that make the ecosystem and its inhabitants seem as though they are glowing.Additionally, he paints with such movement that it doesn’t take much to imaginethe creatures running or flying out of the decorative frames and into thegallery. It is in this manner that he draws the viewer in, until they realizethe interwoven beauty and tragedy within each scene. Messersmith explains how,“each painting develops a narrative that suggests the eternal in its scope, as in thepossibility you are witnessing the ruin of mankind”. With electrifyingcompositions mediating the beauty, chaos, and tragedy that exists in our modernenvironments while technological advancements have made human life moreconvenient and comfortable. Messersmith depicts how the natural landscape andits inhabitants are too often violated and left to deal with the consequenceswe created for them and in return, for ourselves as well. He expands by statinghow “[his] work is really about our relationship to all other living creaturesat this precarious moment, a place midway between hope and despair”.
Beyond the Lost Garden will be on view in the gallery from September 1st, 2023 until October 27th, 2023. Venvi Art Gallery is located at 2901 East Park Avenue Tallahassee FL. For moreinformation about the show please visit www.venviartgallery.com.
