Born in Los Angeles, CA In 1974, Mesler received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. An artist and dealer, Mesler opened his first gallery in Los Angeles in 2000 and operated several galleries in Los Angeles, New York and Hudson over the past two decades. Having painted throughout the early 2000s, Mesler picked up the brush again in 2015 and has since exhibited paintings at various exhibitions. In the past years he has held successful solo shows at Harper’s Books in New York, Kantor Gallery in Los Angeles, and Simon Lee in London. Most recently, Mesler's first solo show at David Kordansky Gallery in January 2021 was instantly sold out with a long waiting list.

Fingers Crossed features Joel Mesler’s highly distinctive recurring motif of bold graphic brightly colored leaves, which was inspired by the Martinique wallpaper at the Beverly Hills Hotel. For Mesler, the hotel evokes powerful memories of his fraught childhood: “At the beginning of my parents’ divorce, we had brunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel. My father threw the brunch table over; the eggs Benedict ran down the side of the table onto my mother’s lap and he had a nervous breakdown. My mother chased him in our station wagon while my brother and I ran after him on foot. That was the my point of arrested development”, Mesler has said (“Joel Mesler: The Alphabet of Creation (For Now)”, Simon Lee Gallery website). The series features punchy, quick-witted texts that convey a wry deadpan humour, most often in relation to childhood memories, personal preoccupations as well as the mythos of Hollywood. In some works the words and letters are rendered as slithering snakes, referencing the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and at t.mes s the snake’s head and tail replaced by pointing hands, referencing the biblical story of creation. In the present work, a single hand dominates the foreground of the composition, its fingers crossed, giving the work its title.

梅斯勒在1974年生於加州洛杉磯，於三瀋市藝術學院獲得藝術碩士學位。梅斯勒是一位藝術家兼藝術經紀人，他的第一間畫廊2000年在洛杉磯開幕。在往後二十年間，梅斯勒在洛杉磯、紐約及哈德遜各地經營多間畫廊。梅斯勒在2000年代初一直有陸續創作，2015年他再度拾起畫筆，此後作品參與過多場展覽。梅斯勒曾在紐約哈珀畫廊、洛杉磯康托畫廊及倫敦Simon Lee畫廊等舉辦個人展覽，屢獲好評。今年1月，梅斯勒於David Kordansky畫廊舉行首個個展，畫作迅速售罄。

《手指交叉》中大膽鮮艷的綠葉圖案，靈感來自比華利山酒店中的馬提尼克風格植物圖案牆紙，它是喬爾·梅斯勒的標誌性主題，在他的其他作品中反覆出現。對梅斯勒而言，這間酒店勾起他童年的慘痛回憶。梅斯勒曾在一個訪談中（《喬爾．梅斯勒：創世的字母（目前為止）》，Simon Lee畫廊網站）分享：「我的父母剛進入離婚階段時，我們一家曾在比華利山酒店吃早午餐。我的父親在席間推翻了桌子，班尼迪蛋從桌邊流到母親的大腿上，父親精神崩潰了。母親駕著旅行車追趕父親，而我與哥哥則跑著追上。這件事成為了妨礙我正常成長的陰影。」梅斯勒這個系列以搶眼又帶點小聰明的文字作為主題，流露出帶嘲諷意味的幽默感，並大多與藝術家的童年回憶、佔據著藝術家思緒的心事，甚至是荷里活的傳聞有關。在其中一些作品中，藝術家以滑行的蛇「寫出」這些文字，令人聯想起伊甸園中的蛇；有時他亦會以手取代蛇頭或蛇尾，似是參考了聖經中創造天地的故事。在本作品中，一隻手佔據畫面前景，兩隻手指交叉，因而得名為《手指交叉》。（譯注：英語「手指交叉」意謂「祈求好運」）