VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Josephine Meckseper will premiere at Blaffer Gallery, the artist's first major solo exhibition in a U.S. museum . Meckseper’s exhibition will focus on her recent works that examine the conflicting interests of the mass media, politicians, and the oil and auto industries as played out in the Iraq War. The show will be on view in the upstairs galleries September 12 through November 14, 2009. A free opening reception is scheduled for September 11 from 6 until 8 p.m.

Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, is extending the run of its fall exhibitions, Josephine Meckseper and Jon Pylypchuk, through Feb. 6, 2010.

Meckseper’s work engages leftist theories and politics in a consumerist reality. Specifically, she examines the semantics of media propaganda as well as capitalist sales and advertising strategies. The exhibition at Blaffer Gallery, curated by Cynthia Woods Mitchell Curatorial Fellow Rachel Hooper, will contain Meckseper’s documentary photographs of antiwar protests; her signature mannequin and product display installations; two videos; and a new installation created on site—a replication of the stage sets used during U.S. presidential television debates.

Describing her own work, Meckseper states, “Instead of aestheticizing political issues and problems, what I try to do is to challenge ingrained perspectives, for instance, habits of seeing while 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.”

JRP|Ringier is publishing a catalogue of Josephine Meckseper with texts by Hooper, Heike Munder, director of the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art (migros museumfür gegenwartskunst) in Zürich, Switzerland, and Sylvère Lotringer, professor of French literature and philosophy at Columbia University, in conversation with cultural theorist Paul Virilio. It is published on the occasion of Meckseper’s exhibitions at the Migros Museum, the Center for Contemporary Art in Münster, Germany (AZKM - Ausstellungshalle zeitgenössische Kunst Münster), and Blaffer Gallery.

About the Artist:
Josephine Meckseper was born in 1964 in Lilienthal, Germany, and received her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1992 from the California Institute of Arts in Valencia. She has lived in the United States for nearly twenty years, currently living and working in New York City. Her work has been included in such prominent exhibitions as New Photography 2008 at the Museum of Modern Art; Prospect 1 New Orleans; That Was Then . . . This Is Now at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City; the international touring exhibition USA Today: New American Art from the Saatchi Gallery; the 2006 Whitney Biennial Day for Night; and a significant retrospective at the Stuttgart Art Museum (Kunstmuseum Stuttgart) in Stuttgart, Germany.

September 12 – November 14, 2009
Opening Reception: September 11, 6 – 8 p.m.

Artist’s Talk and Video Screening with Josephine Meckseper:
November 12, 6:30 p.m.

Josephine Meckseper is organized by Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston. The exhibition and publication are made possible, in part, by The Cecil Amelia Blaffer von Furstenberg Endowment for Exhibitions and Programs, Houston Endowment Inc., and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, with in-kind support provided by Neiman Marcus.

Also on view at Blaffer Gallery, an exhibition by artist Jon Pylypchuk.

Pictured:  Josephine Meckseper, detail of 0% Down, 2008, Video, Duration 6 minutes, Courtesy of the artist, Elizabeth Dee, New York, and Arndt & Partner, Berlin.