DISPATCH - JULY 4, 2013 (10:35 a.m.)
WATER MILL, NY-
The Parrish Art Museum's second Parrish Platform artist installation opens today with new works by Josephine Meckseper. Meckseper's sculptural works are installed in the outdoor gallery, lobby and permanent collection galleries. She is the first artist to make use of the outdoor gallery space.
Meckseper questions the power of advertising and the consumerism that characterizes our society in her installations. Her Parrish Project opens today and remains on view through Oct 14, 2013.
The Parrish Platform is a new artist project series that launched when the museum reopened in November 2012 in its new location in Water Mill, NY. Invited artists are requested to make work that responds to the museum's architecture, art collection and grounds. Hope Sandrow of Southampton, NY launched the series in November 2012. Meckseper is the second invited artist. She is based in Amagansett and New York City.
For Meckseper's Platform Project, visitors encounter her first installation in the outside Main Entrance to the museum. This first look centers on two glass vitrines that relate to the museum's architecture and geometry.
Inside the museum in the Main Lobby, Sabotage on Auto Assembly Line to Slow it Down (2009) can be found. The work is a mirrored display featuring a sculpture of car tires on a chrome conveyor belt and two videos presented on stacked monitors.
The artwork is installed to relate and react to changing conditions unfolding outside of the museum. Sabotage on Auto Assembly Line to Slow it Down is capable of reflecting the passing traffic on Montauk Highway visible through the south window wall of the lobby. To the north, it creates a visual axis between the two glass vitrines installed outside that are visible through the window wall that divides the dual entrances.
Inside the museum is Meckseper's Crow (2011). The slatwall work is installed next to John Chamberlain’s sculpture Tambourinefrappe (2010) in the Look and Look Again gallery. Slatwall panels are common fixtures used to display merchandise of almost any kind.
“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,” says Meckseper about her choice to site Crow besides Tambourinefrappe.
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, according to the Parrish.
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"Crow" by Josephine Meckseper, 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. inches.
Servais Family Collection, Brussels. Photo by Genevieve Hanson.
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Corvette (2011), a second slatwall piece, is installed in the Collective Conversations gallery. The artwork shares the exhibition space with works by Willem de Kooning, Dan Flavin, and Keith Sonnier.
The red, white, and blue color scheme of Corvette relates to de Kooning’s painting Untitled XXXVIII (1983). Flavin’s fluorescent light installation (1963) and Keith Sonnier’s neon one (2004) are reflected in the mirrored slatwall of Corvette and are echoed in the fluorescent tubes centered beneath it.
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"Corvette" by Josephine Meckseper, 2011. Metal fixtures; acrylic fixtures; metal chains, rings, buckles and 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 & Jonathan Miller, Old Westbury, NY. Image courtesy of Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, Galerie Reinhard Hauff, Stuttgart and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. Photo by Genevieve Hanson.
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Meckseper is known for her film, photography, and installations which conflate art objects with commodities, according to the Parrish. By 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’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 City and Amagansett, NY.
Parrish Platform is organized by the Parrish Art Museum's Curator of Special Projects Andrea Grover. The series asks invited artists to consider the entire museum as a potential canvas for works that transcend disciplinary boundaries.
“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,” said Grover.
Sandrow took a three-prong approach for her installations inaugurating the Parrish Platform series. Genius Loci (the prevailing spirit of a place) included a participatory project held during the museum's grand opening in November 2012, Observational Findings, a mixed media artwork installed in the museum's indoor main entrance, and a series of site-specific events and projects that evoked the spirit of place under the (Sky)gaze umbrella.
BASIC FACTS: Josephine Meckseper's Parrish Platform installation opens July 4 and remains on view through Oct 14. Meckseper's installations question the power of advertising and the consumerism that characterizes our society.
The Parrish Art Museum is located at 279 Montauk Hwy, Water Mill, NY 11976. www,parrishart.org.
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