Miles of Smiles

Joel Mesler: Miles of Smiles is the artist’s first museum exhibition in the region of his adopted home, where he began a new life in 2017. Mesler’s practice sheds light on universal themes by filtering them through autobiography, humor, self-deprecation, and surprising compositional juxtapositions, often employing graphic patterns and motifs, elaborate typography, and personal iconography. He has explored the power of acceptance, allowing emotions—as well as the cultural forms in which they become entangled—to exist at the center of his projects.

Mesler—a former art dealer—has always been an artist as well as a collector, connoisseur, archivist, artistic collaborator, and cultural steward. Miles of Smiles pulls together all of these facets in one presentation. In his East Hampton office and studio, he lives and works among art and personal effects in a horror vacui environment, in which he has an unmediated experience with art and objects that inhabit every square inch of his space. The installation features a varied selection of the artist’s own work, as well as personal objects and works from his collection by other artists with whom he has deep personal connections, including his contemporaries Sarah Aibel, Roger Herman, Sheree Hovsepian, Rashid Johnson, Henry Taylor, and Austyn Weiner as well as artists who have influenced his practice: Francesco Clemente, Mauricio Lasansky, and Ben Shahn.