Josephine Meckseper, Fall of the Empire, 2008, Mannequin head, metal wine rack, feather duster, metal display stand, small flag, bath mats, mounted poster, small statue, vase, 123 x 243.5 x 68.5 cm, Courtesy of the artist und Galerie Arndt & Partner, Berlin.
Josephine Meckseper, Talk to Cindy, 2005, Aluminum, Plexiglas, glass, lights, metal display stands, painted toilet plunger, ink jet print mounted on cardboard underwear box, found jewelry, gouache and tape on inkjet print mounted on cardboard, found metal scrubber, found jewelry, glass ball, gouache on plastic sign, 226.1 x 116.8 x 45.7 cm.
Josephine Meckseper, Installationsansicht in der Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, Untitled (Miriam), 2008, Mixed media on canvas, 101.6 x 76.2 cm. Ten High, 2008, Plexiglas platform, 3 mannequins, collapsible walker, cane, bottle of whiskey, Bible, ash tray with cigarettes, broken mirror on wooden panel, poster mounted to aluminum, mixed media on canvas, aluminum sign, T-Shirt, tie and vomit, 350.5 x 350.5 x 350.5 cm, Untitled (American Flag), 2009, Black paint on white wall, Courtesy of the artist und Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, Foto: Josephine Meckseper und VG Bild Kunst Bonn.
Josephine Meckseper, I Love Jesus, 2005, Aluminum, Plexiglas, glass, lights, C-print, metal display stands, plastic mannequin leg, argyle sock, found jewelry, gouache and tape on inkjet print mounted on cardboard, toilet brush, feather duster, acrylic on glass ball, glass vases, 226.1 x 116.8 x 45.7 cm. |
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Migros Museum
für Gegenwartskunst
Limmatstrasse 270
+41 44 277 20 50
Zürich
Josephine Meckseper
February 21-May 3, 2009
Situated somewhere between the trappings of political activism and mass consumerism, the work of Josephine Meckseper (born 1964 in Lilienthal, lives and works in New York) functions like sculptural collages that evoke the paradoxes of a current capitalist value system. In Meckseper’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland, the migros museum für gegenwartkunst is exhibiting a series of new works investigating the complex interaction between the auto and oil industries and the war in Iraq.
Since the early 1990s, Meckseper’s installations, photography, and films have reflected upon the reciprocity between a culture of consumption and politics. Shiny consumer products become artefacts of a political activism, which, in effect, yield here to a veritable constellation of confusion. Window display mannequins – exponents of a consumer-happy society – have been draped with picket signs while glamorous accessories and toilet brushes have been absurdly confronted by Meckseper’s photographs of street protests. The incongruous arrangement of contrary worlds in a seamless display refers point-blank to the flattening out of political and aesthetic principles in the mass media. Meckseper works with symbols, which serve as metaphors for the critique of late capitalist society. Her arrangements of objects and artificial scenarios recall the aesthetics of department store displays, but at the same time, re-contextualize the objects presented: the protest slogans are given a new significance – they become “a provocation against the presumed state of paralysis of our world.” In this confrontation of normative societal attitudes Meckseper challenges the viewer to evaluate their own code of values.
In her most recent works shown at the migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Meckseper questions the values and morals of American society in light of the USA’s invasion of Iraq. She employs emblems of the American oil and auto industries to represent both their economic success and, likewise, their downfall. The major work in the exhibition is the strikingly edited video work 0% Down (2008) with its industrial soundtrack, Total War. Elegant, fast, and powerful cars lifted from American advertising spots emerge swiftly as ironic references to the perverse and manipulative rhetoric of the auto industry’s advertisements, which use military visual language in aggressive sales strategies. The life-size works created for this exhibition, Untitled (Bunker) (2009), modelled after a military bunker, and Untitled (Oil Pump) (2009), which replicates an oil pump, become symbols of the war for oil. The work Unable Bodies (2008) — a medical walker adorned with typical American emblems including the Bible, the American flag, an oil canister and a foxtail — denounces the downside of the invasion via an undisguised reference to crippled veterans, while the installation Negative Horizon (2008) satirizes car-centric American society. The built-in wall showcase Fall of the Empire (2007) and the platform sculpture Ten High (2007) allude to the death throes of an imploded economic model. Meckseper adroitly dissects and re-contextualizes such border transgressions without forcing ideological dogma on the spectator. Like a double agent, she plays both sides off each other, deftly changing the role of the observer; and, by using varying perspectives, offers up a reappraisal of contemporary politics and the strategies of advertising rhetoric.
The basic foundation of my work is a critique of capitalism. The objects here are simply employed as a vocabulary and embody a form of commodity representation. I’m less interested in the discourse of aesthetics than in factually exploring the contradictions and absurdities of the objects exhibited. The idea behind the shelves and showcases, which I began producing in 2000, was to create an artificial focus of attack, which established a link to the showcases smashed by demonstrators. In my exhibitions I wanted to show not only the films and photos I had taken of demonstrations, but also to bring out the paradox inherent in manic consumption and its presentation platform. The shelves and showcases present a collection of manifestly grotesque elements or pseudo-consumer goods. Instead of aestheticizing political issues and problems, what I try to do is to challenge ingrained perspectives: for instance, habits of seeing brought about by leafing through a newspaper in which horror stories from Iraq appear side by side with underwear advertisements. These works exaggerate this mode of disseminating information and consumerism in order to expose it. The individual elements of the works symbolize or simulate commercial objects”.
In her photography, videos and installations Josephine Meckseper (born Lilienthal, 1964, lives and works in New York) engages with the interaction between politics and glamour. Thus, in her works, images of political activism — whether photographs of demonstrations or newspaper cuttings — set against sparkling consumer goods and advertising motifs evoke a paradoxical effect. On the one hand the pop-political vocabulary of forms appears absurd in its opposing ideological effect, on the other the artist discloses references by interpolating them seamlessly in a decoratively elegant looking display. Meckseper has pursued the capitalist-critique approach of recent years with subject areas agitating around the Iraq war and the oil industry with all their inherent economic and socio-political implications, in particular regarding the automobile industry. The exhibition in the migros museum für gegenwartskunst is to display a new series of works developed from this context. Hence in the Ten High installation (2007) numerous silver shop display dummies converge on a mirror smooth platform holding in their hands objects such as signs, bearing anti-war slogans like “No War in Iran” or the notorious recession signal “Going Out of Business / Sale”, a whisky bottle or a bible and other classical American “icons”. Meckseper’s object arrangements recall the window displays of department stores and expensive boutiques, re-contextualising the exhibited objects: the shibboleths are ascribed a new significance from now on a consumerist lifestyle posture.
Works by Josephine Meckseper were last to be seen amongst others in the New Photography: Josephine Meckseper and Mikhael Subotzky, MoMA (2008), exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (solo exhibition, 2007) or in the Whitney Biennial (2006). The exhibition in the migros museum für gegenwartskunst is curated by Heike Munder. |
