Josephine Meckseper
dal 11/11/2010 al 28/1/2011
Segnalato da
11/11/2010
Josephine Meckseper
Galerie Reinhard Hauff, Stuttgart
A solo exhibition of new sculptural, painting, photographic and video works by artist. For her fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, Meckseper continues her examination of display and commerce, constructing an urban architecture of commodification in the gallery with a real invocation of the metropolis. Works are constructed and arranged with the logic of a city-grid, verticality, unit and repetition.
"Furs, traveling bags, china — these things are all a much more
rewarding sight than the grimy little pictures nailed on the grey wall
of the passéist painter’s studio." Giacomo Balla
Galerie Reinhard Hauff is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new
sculptural, painting, photographic and video works by Josephine
Meckseper.
For her fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, Meckseper continues her
examination of display and commerce, constructing an urban
architecture of commodification in the gallery with a real invocation
of the metropolis. Works are constructed and arranged with the logic
of a city-grid, verticality, unit and repetition. Paintings form a row
of windows on the wall and hang on grids, looking outward towards
abstracted landscapes of road and car. Sculptures erected on racks,
pedestals and vitrines invoke street, skyscraper and block, where the
everyday objects they showcase (sunglasses, ties and hosiery) stand
both as the sale merchandise and as the disembodied characters who
shuffle through the architecture of commodity and control.
This emphasis on the urban, on industry and auto mechanics, recalls
Futurism, though Meckseper employs its aesthetics (machine, city,
chrome, repetition) in critique rather than exaltation. Marinetti
famously dictated the Futurist manifesto in a muddy drainage ditch
from the wreckage of a car crash, and there are echoes of the auto
wreck here. Car parts and prosthetics are strewn across grids, like
body and auto parts littered across a road after an accident. However,
where Futurism espoused a hot love for metropolis, military, man,
fascism and war, Meckseper invokes these symbols in a cold critique of
commoditization and the military industrial complex.
There is a real
disquiet in the work-unease, anxiety and unformed hazard. In the video
"Contaminator", a vague yet menacing smoke, recalling toxic cloud,
dust storm, smog pollution or the smolder after an explosion,
permeates a room of debris. People move within the cloud in a
transient state, like workers and victims in the aftermath of a
disaster. Images of oil spills and black paint, like fossil fuel, seep
throughout the show, evoking the threats of war, energy dependence,
and ecological disaster, ever present here as in modern life. The
presence of these threats within the architecture of commerce deftly
tie contemporary hazard to the culture of consumption.
This is Josephine Meckseper’s fourth solo show with Galerie Reinhard
Hauff and follows a recent solo exhibition at Elizabeth Dee Gallery,
New York, earlier this year. Her film "Mall of America" was recently
on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, as part of
the 2010 Whitney Biennial. In 2009, Meckseper had solo exhibitions at
the Blaffer Gallery, The Art Museum at the University of Houston,
Texas, the Ausstellungshalle zeitgenössische Kunst in Münster, Germany
and the Migros Museum in Zürich, Switzerland. Her work was presented
at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in the exhibition "New
Photography 2008: Josephine Meckseper and Mikhael Subotzky", and in
2007, her work was the focus of a mid-career retrospective presented
at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, which traveled to Gesellschaft für
Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen. She has been featured in numerous national and
international exhibitions including "Brave New Worlds", Walker Art
Center, Minneapolis, MN, touring to Fundación / Colección Jumex,
Mexico City; "Resistance Is", Whitney Museum of American Art, New
York, NY; Second Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Biennial
of Contemporary Art of Seville, Seville; "USA Today", Royal Academy of
Arts, London, which traveled to The State Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg; "Media Burn" at the Tate Modern, London; and the Whitney
Biennial 2006: "Day for Night" at the Whitney Museum of American Art,
NY.
Opening Friday, 12.11.2010, 7 - 10 pm
Galerie Reinhard Hauff
Paulinenstr. 47 - Stuttgart
Tue - Fr 1 - 6 pm, Sat 11 am - 3 pm and by appointment
free admission