Solace in the Clouds: A Review of Meghan Arlen’s Obscured Geographies

Arlen presents what feels like both metropolitan and rural views from above. The geometric lines in “Y-Y Diptych” (2021) feel like roads and highways, cutting across urban sprawl. The surface of “Instead I Got Got” (2023) feels like plots of land that have been wrung dry by neglect. Every terrain on display tells a unique story through the shapes, sizes and hues presented. Things are separated, fenced. The impact of constructed borders seems to be a key idea in this body of work.

These themes are accentuated by both Arlen’s choice of materials – many of which have been recycled and repurposed – and their distinct arrangements. Canvas and linen act as a kind of base for her topographical structures. Factory-made corrugated material sits next to paint, sits next to plaster, sits next to copper, sits next to iron. Materials overlap, intersect, but are often separated clearly by the artist’s precise hand. There is a palpable level of care in the work, bordering on the fetishistic. When inspecting each piece closely it is hard not to feel that I am confronted with objects born from ritual.

In what is perhaps my favorite piece, “Synonyms” (2020), grids are formed by intersecting and overlapping lines. Unpredictable shapes blend and blur into one another. A large, gestural flash of white pours up from the bottom, curves, and stops halfway. A sign of a jobsite abandoned. The ground is being worked over, patched, and worked over again, always in flux. The innate human desire to pacify an ever-changing environment is on full display.

While the mastery of materials and their arrangement here are impressive, for me, the real engine of these artworks’ lay in Arlen’s utilization of color. They are calming. Soothing. Arlen’s decision to work with a desaturated palette imbues the work with a more natural – and distant – quality. The colors presented feel like they’re seen through a layer of atmosphere. Her piece, “Promise?” (2023), is the clearest example of this sensation. Through the image I can feel the cabin pressure. I can hear the white noise of a plane at cruising altitude. I am calm, soothed, and I am en route.

The muted whites, blacks, blues, oranges, browns and greens evoke an organic world. Through them you can almost smell the land, the dirt, the air. But there is a tension. The materials carrying these colors remind us that these are not things stripped from the forest floor or from freshly tilled soil. They are industrial, wholly manmade. Arlen’s variety of mediums are all born from the factory line.

Many of the pieces in Obscured Geographies border on the sculptural, breaking the simple flat plane of traditional painting. They are harder to categorize and feel nearer to the “Combines” of Robert Rauschenberg than to traditional painting. Rauschenberg, infamous for his combination of media and medium to ecstatic, maximal effect, seems to be channeled by Arlen, and cooled down. Arlen’s message is clear, restrained, and minimal.