John Jacobsmeyer’s plywood backdrops contain scenes that explore fantastical narratives, and lately, video game culture in particular. In his debut show at Jonathan Levine Projects, titled “Great Feats and Defeats,” continues a fascination with wood for the artist that reaches back to his childhood. The artist says that “rotary sawn pine plywood is cheap yet durable and along with being used as sub-flooring and fencing for construction sites. It’s also the material twelve-year-old children will use to build clubhouses in the woods where they’ll rule their own kingdoms, wage wars and rebuild bigger and wilder each time.” Jacobsmeyer was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
What this show looks at is how “nostalgic fantasy life in the woods has been replaced by the seductive narratives of video games,” a statement says. This show poses this question: “If time were reversed and analog followed digital, if plywood clubhouses were made in order to bring video game narratives into the real world, how would that look? How would that story play out?”
The show kicks off today and runs through March 17. See more works from the show below.
New York City-based artist 
Figurative painter 
Canadian artist