May 5, 2021 | BY MARTHA SCHWENDENER

Nature Morte, a still-life show featuring about 60 artists; Remy Jungerman’s painterly compositions of textiles and clay; and Florian Meisenberg’s abstract blobs and painted birds.

Stand at one end of Florian Meisenberg’s exhibition “A story is always told into two ears,” at the Simone Subal Gallery, and you see a lineup of paintings mounted at 90-degree angles to the gallery walls and a candy-colored mural covering the windows. Stand at the other end of the room and you see the backs of the same paintings — and an entirely different show. This sums up Meisenberg’s approach: He treats painting as a device, albeit a sophisticated one, for reminding us that everything can be viewed from multiple perspectives.

A yellow painting of a grid receding into space from 2021 — essentially describing how linear perspective works in painting to create a sense of depth — has a lengthy title in the form of queries. It starts, “Il grotto fiori (Why is sand so comfy everywhere? How does sand adhere so well to multiple surface structures?).” Other paintings depict roughly painted birds, fantastic creatures, abstract blobs and vegetal forms in front of or behind a gridded fence or in the mythical Tibetan bardo, a transition period between death and rebirth.
“This period of bardo state is believed to be a time of vulnerability,” Meisenberg explains in an accompanying zine you can view online. This state of vulnerability could also be applied, though, to the act of making or looking at new and otherworldly paintings like Meisenberg’s — or wandering around the world in the later stages of a pandemic.

Photo: Installation view of Florian Meisenberg’s exhibition A story is always told into two ears at Simone Subal. Credit: Florian Meisenberg and Simone Subal Gallery; Dario Lasagni