Dear Rabbi

Following his mother’s passing in 2010, Mesler retrieved the Rabbi paintings that had once adorned his childhood home and brought them into his own family home. As Mesler, being a collector himself, was often present in auction rooms and online sales, he began to notice that Rabbi paintings from his era rarely attracted bids or buyers. Essentially, he thought to himself, what happens to these Rabbi paintings when they go unsold?

Knowing Judaica is a verb and needs to be a lived experience, Mesler began to purchase these non-desired Rabbi paintings at a ferocious pace. After several years of buying these unwanted Rabbi paintings, he realized he had amassed hundreds of them. Also realizing he was a painter himself, he wanted to try his hand at painting and replicating some of these unwanted Rabbi’s.

In Dear Rabbi, Mesler will present around a dozen of his own rabbi paintings interspersed with those from his private collection. The exhibition is a Where’s Waldo, or rather Where’s Yankel, of Mesler’s rabbi paintings, if you like. Upstairs, a suite of uniquely hand-colored lithographs will hang on the gallery’s long brick wall. Their richly textured hair and colorful beards recall Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer hanging in the Neue Galerie or the ornate cloak worn by Herma, the subject of his 1907 portrait, Hope II on view at the Museum of Modern Art.