Parrish Platform to Feature Installations by Josephine Meckseper

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PARRISH PLATFORM TO FEATURE INSTALLATIONS BY JOSEPHINE MECKSEPER

Sculptural Works to Respond to Parrish Art Museum’s Architecture and Collection

WATER MILL, NY 6/28/2013 —Artist Josephine Meckseper will respond to the Parrish Art Museum’s architecture and collection with sculptural works installed in the outdoor gallery, lobby, and permanent collection galleries. Opening July 4 and continuing through October 14, 2012, Meckseper’s installation is the second iteration of Parrish Platform, an experimental series of artist-driven projects. 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. According to Grover, “Twice a year, a new artist or collective will be invited to respond to and activate the myriad spaces and grounds of the Museum, from the corridors to the café to the covered porches and terraces, encouraging new ways to experience art, architecture, the landscape, and the Museum’s building.” Josephine Meckseper is known for her film, photography, and installations, which conflate art objects with commodities. Blending materials and signifiers from the worlds of advertising, retail, and visual art, Meckseper calls into question the relationship of power to cultural influence. “My works in themselves are referring to display ‘platforms’ to create a critical dialogue about our consumer society,” Meckseper has said. “By employing shelves, window displays, mirrored platforms, and retail slatwalls as a literal platform to display objects and images, my installations question the paradox inherent in manic consumption and advertising language.”

Meckseper will be the first artist to use the outdoor gallery space. Approaching the main entrance, visitors will encounter two glass vitrines in the exterior space that relate to the architecture and geometry of the Museum. Inside, in the main lobby, a large mirrored sculptural installation will create a visual axis between the indoor and outdoor works visible through the main lobby’s windows. The lobby piece, Sabotage on Auto Assembly Line to Slow it Down (2009), consists of a mirrored display featuring a sculpture of car tires on a chrome conveyer belt and two videos presented on stacked monitors. The installation will reflect the passing traffic on Montauk Highway, visible through the south window wall of the lobby. The slatwall work Crow (2011) will be installed next to John Chamberlain’s sculpture Tambourinefrappe (2010) in the Look and Look Again gallery. (Slatwall panels are common fixtures used to display almost any type of merchandise.) According to Meckseper, “The juxtaposition of Chamberlain’s smashed car sculpture with the Jeep logo and men’s neckties on canvas bring to mind the local car dealerships not far from the Museum.” The eight-by-eight foot slatwall pieces deliberately reference the work of Minimalists Donald Judd and Dan Flavin as well as Minimalism’s rejection of Abstract Expressionism. Corvette (2011), a second slatwall piece, will be installed in the Collective Conversations gallery, sharing the space with works by Willem de Kooning, Dan Flavin, and Keith Sonnier. The red, white, and blue color scheme relates to de Kooning’s painting Untitled XXXVIII (1983) while Flavin’s fluorescent light installation (1963) and Keith Sonnier’s neon (2004) are reflected in the mirrored slatwall and echoed in the fluorescent tubes centered beneath Corvette . 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, NY and Amagansett, NY.

Image captions, left to right:

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

Crow , 2011. Metal fixtures; car taillight; plastic sign; acrylic and mixed media on canvas on acrylic mirrored MDF slatwall with aluminum edging; fluorescent lights with acrylic sheeting, 96 x 96 x 11 1/2 inches. Servais Family Collection, Brussels

Parrish Platform’s 2013 residency with Josephine Meckseper is made possible by the support of Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman, Dorothy Lichtenstein, Phillips, and Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder. Amy and John Phelan and The County of Suffolk’s generous contributions are 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.

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