Josephine Meckseper
July 4–October 14, 2013
Parrish Art Museum
279 Montauk Highway
Water Mill, NY 11976
Hours: Wednesday–Monday 11am–6pm,
Friday 11am–8pm
T 631 283 2118
Sculptural works to respond to Parrish Art Museum’s collection and architecture of its new Herzog & de Meuron designed building, as part of the first summer program in new space
Josephine Meckseper has developed a practice that melds the aesthetic language of modernism with a profound critique of consumerism. In her signature shop-window displays, large-scale sculptures, installations, and films she draws a direct correlation to the way consumer culture defines and circumvents the key instruments of individual political agency. Blending materials and signifiers from the worlds of advertising, retail, and visual art, Meckseper calls into question the relationship of power to cultural influence.
Organized by Curator of Special Projects Andrea Grover, Platform’s ongoing projects consider the entire Museum as a potential canvas for works that transcend disciplinary boundaries. Meckseper’s large-scale works for the Parrish Platform will respond to the new Herzog & de Meuron building and the Museum’s collection with sculptural works installed in the outdoor gallery, lobby, and permanent collection galleries. Meckseper will be the first artist to use the outdoor gallery space, where two monumental glass vitrines will relate to the glass windows of the museum and invoke Mies van der Rohe’s Crystal Hall from 1927. A large mirrored sculptural installation, Sabotage on Auto Assembly Line to Slow it Down (2009), will create a visual axis between the indoor and outdoor lobbies and reflect the passing traffic on Montauk Highway. Within the permanent collection galleries, two of Meckseper’s eight-by-eight-foot panel slatwall works deliberately reference the work of Minimalists Donald Judd and Dan Flavin as well as Minimalism’s rejection of Abstract Expressionism. The slatwall work Crow (2011) will be installed next to John Chamberlain’s sculpture Tambourinefrappe (2010) in the Look and Look Again gallery, and Corvette (2011) will be on view in the Collective Conversations gallery, sharing the space with works by Willem de Kooning, Dan Flavin, and Keith Sonnier. Within this context, the art historical references in Meckseper’s new works are highlighted—intervening prominently with the Museum’s collection.
Josephine Meckseper was born in Lilienthal, Germany, and studied at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and CalArts, Los Angeles, where she received her MFA. Meckseper’s Manhattan Oil Project, commissioned by the Art Production Fund, was installed in a lot adjacent to Times Square in 2012. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, and is in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Zürich, and the Hammer Museum, UCLA. Meckseper lives in New York and Amagansett, NY.
Parrish Platform is made possible, in part, by the generous support of Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman, Dorothy Lichtenstein, Phillips, and Stephen and Sandy Perlbinder. The County of Suffolk’s generous contribution is also gratefully acknowledged.
The Museum’s programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.
Hampton Jitney is the Official Transportation Sponsor and an Official Media Sponsor of the Parrish Art Museum.
About the Parrish Art Museum
The Parrish Art Museum is the oldest cultural institution on the East End of Long Island, uniquely situated within one of the most concentrated creative communities in the United States. The Parrish is dedicated to the collection, preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of art from the nineteenth century to the present, with a particular focus on honoring the rich creative legacy of the East End, celebrating the region’s enduring heritage as a vibrant art colony, telling the story of our area, our “sense of place,” and its national—even global—impact on the world of art. The Parrish is committed to educational outreach, to serving as a dynamic cultural resource for its diverse community, and to celebrating artistic innovation for generations to come.
*Josephine Meckseper, Corvette, 2011. Metal fixtures, acrylic fixtures, metal chains, metal rings, metal buckles, metal hooks, tail light, digital inkjet print on canvas with plastic on acrylic mirrored MDF slatwall with aluminum edging, 96 x 96 x 33 inches. Collection of Cathy and Jonathan Miller, Old Westbury, NY. Images courtesy of Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, Galerie Reinhard Hauff, Stuttgart, and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Parrish Art Museum photo by Matthu Placek.
