Through February 6, 2010

Related Program:

Josephine Meckseper Lecture by Sylvère Lotringer
Wednesday, January 27, 6:30 p.m.
Fine Arts Building room 110 (adjacent to Blaffer)
 
Sylvère Lotringer is professor emeritus of French Literature and Philosophy at Columbia University and the founder and editor of Semiotext(e). He is credited for introducing French Theory in America with his "Foreign Agents" series. He has published widely on Dada and surrealism, situationism, Mallarmé, Proust, structuralism and post-structuralism, as well as anthropology, semiotics, philosophy and art in relation to 20th-century literature. Lotringer also contributed a text and an interview with cultural theorist Paul Virilio in the Josephine Meckseper exhibition catalogue. His lecture, entitled "Total Mobilization," will focus on Meckseper's work in the context of consumerism and war. Blaffer Gallery will remain open through the duration of the event. Admission to the lecture is free.

About the Exhibition:

Josephine Meckseper premiers her first major solo exhibition in a Texas museum at Blaffer Gallery. Meckseper’s exhibition focuses 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 is on view in the upstairs galleries September 12, 2009, through February 6, 2010. A free opening reception is scheduled for September 11 from 6 until 8 p.m.

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 associate curator Rachel Hooper, contains Meckseper’s documentary photographs of antiwar protests; her signature mannequin and product display installations; a video; 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.

Further Reading:

Kelly Klaasmeyer in the Houston Press: "Toilet Brushes and Total War" (11/3/09)
Eric Zimmerman in his blog cablegram: "Country for Old Men" (9/14/09)
Douglas Britt in the Houston Chronicle: "Unsettling works at Blaffer Gallery are order of the day" (9/10/09)
Lauren Adams in ...might be good "September Picks" (September 2009)
Flavin Judd in BOMB Magazine: "Josephine Meckseper" (Winter 2009)
Liam Gillick in Interview Magazine: "Josephine Meckseper" (11/28/08)

Multimedia:
Jospehine Meckseper with Bob Stevenson on KUHF's The Front Row (10/20/09)

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.