Josephine Meckseper at Proyectos Monclova

Artist: Josephine Meckseper

Venue: Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City

Date: September 22 – October 28, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City

PROYECTOSMONCLOVA is pleased to present Josephine Meckseper’s first solo exhibition in Mexico City.

Meckseper’s practice is premised in a consideration of the visual and material cultures of consumerism, art history, counter-culture, and 20^th century modes of display through installations, assemblages, and film.

Using methods of retail display such as glass vitrines, shelves, shop windows, combined with a methodical and confrontational use of mirrors and reflection, her work establishes a non-linear narrative that highlights capitalism’s infinite tendency to appropriate, replicate, and corrupt.

In her show at PROYECTOSMONCLOVA, Meckseper juxtaposes paradoxical elements such as a film still of Sharon Stone, references to Brancusi’s endless column, a mannequin hand, and a painting that reads AUSSTELLUNG [exhibition]. A series of paintings of casual brushy strokes made with toilet wands eludes to mid-century master works, but here the painter’s canvas has been substituted by blue denim, replacing the traditional bourgeois canvas for a working class and revolutionary signifier.

Her film DDYANLALSATSY is a supercut of footage from the 1980’s American culture touchstone television shows Dynasty and Dallas. Featuring scenes of exploding oil rigs, diamond necklaces, cowboys on horses, ejaculating champagne bottles, and protesters brandishing signs behind a chain-link fence that say “Americans GO HOME!”, these soft-focus media fantasies of dissent and affluence resonate now as self-fulfilling prophesies. Set to a Detroit acid house dance track and reflected in a mirror floor sculpture, the vintage TV footage hauntingly forecasts the current explosive political climate of the United States.

Meckseper’s work has been exhibited at institutions worldwide, including solo exhibitions at: Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany (2014); The Parrish Art Museum, New york, USA (2013); Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland (2009); Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2008), and featured in various international biennials. Her film work is currently included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Meckseper’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA. Meckseper lives and works in New York City.

Josephine Meckseper, 2017, exhibition view, Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City

Josephine Meckseper, Dirty Hands, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, cast aluminum, stainless steel stand, wood, jewelry, and Chemetal laminated to ultralight-MDF shelf with steel bracket, 79.7 x 152.4 x 35.6 cm

Josephine Meckseper, FILMTRACT NO. 2, 2015, Acrylic sheeting, acrylic paint, aluminum can, wood, blackened, patinated, aluminum frame, 122.87 x 122.87 x 6.35 cm

Josephine Meckseper, Matisse Window II, 2013, Acrylic on denim, 182.88 x 139.7 x 3.81 cm

Josephine Meckseper, The Lily of the Field, 2012, Mixed media on MDF slatwall with aluminum edging, 245.11 x 245.11 x 30.48 cm

Josephine Meckseper, Theory of Progress, 2013, Acrylic on wood, acrylic on Plexiglass, and pigment print on anodized aluminum in stainless steel and glass vitrine, 247.65 x 121.92 x 121.92 cm