Josephine Meckseper

Josephine Meckseper is a German-born artist, based in New York City. Her large-scale installations and films have been exhibited in various international biennials and museum shows worldwide.

Life and education

Meckseper grew up in Worpswede, Germany, an artists' community founded at the beginning of the 20th century by a group of artists including Heinrich Vogeler (1872–1942). Vogeler was a diverse political artist and architect whose early work is situated within the Jugendstil movement, a German offspring of Art Nouveau. Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) and the writer and poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), both lived in Worpswede for parts of their life.

Meckseper studied at Berlin University of the Arts in Germany from 1986 to 1990, and completed her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 1992, where she was influenced by artists Michael Asher and Charles Gaines, filmmaker Thom Andersen and literary critic and cultural theorist Sylvère Lotringer.

Meckseper's father is the renowned German artist Friedrich Meckseper (1936–2019).

Work

Films Early Work: Meckseper’s first films time at CalArts coincided with the Gulf War and the Los Angeles riots, 1992; during this politically-charged period her first installations and films reflected upon the actions of the Situationist International who advocated experimentation with the construction of situations, namely setting up environments as alternatives to capitalist order. Meckseper’s subsequent short films followed a similar principle and were filmed at Anti-capitalist and Anti-war protests in different parts of the world; as well as at the Mall of America in Minneapolis.

Meckseper’s film PELLEA, 2018 adapts the Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande (1892), weaving together fictional scenarios and dramatic footage captured by the artist at the 2017 presidential inauguration and the landmark women’s march that followed. Conflating contemporary political realities to Arnold Schoenberg’s modernist sound poem of Pelléas et Mélisande, the city of Washington, D.C. and its architecture become a context and site of departure, giving voice to debates around notions of gender found in the original play. Meckseper expresses through cinema the dramatic narratives and relationships contained within the universe of her signature glass and mirror vitrines, and draws a direct correlation to the way early Modernism and the avant-garde developed into a form of political and aesthetic resistance to classism and capitalism.

FAT Magazine In 1994, Meckseper founded FAT Magazine, a conceptual magazine project distributed at newsstands and in supermarkets, but also exhibited in galleries and museums in the form of wallpaper. It was inspired by political theorist and radical publisher Jean-Paul Marat’s newspaper, published during the French Revolution called L'Ami du peuple and the avant-garde tradition of breaking down barriers between art and life. Since 1994 Meckseper has published five issues: Good and Evil (1994); Surrender (1995/1996); on Fire (1997); Overflow (1999); Objectification (2018).

Vitrines

Source:

While Meckseper’s earliest vitrine works commented on contemporary consumer culture using the shop window as an example and focus point for civic unrest and protest, documented in her film works, her later steel and glass vitrines, allude to the political dimension of early modernist Bauhaus display architecture and design between World War I and II in Weimar Germany. Meckseper melds the aesthetic language of early modernism with her own objects and paintings and footage of historical and political undercurrents, taking on a similar function as Mies van der Rohe’s well-known designs and glass structures for art collections: art and art history are on display. Often contained within Meckseper’s displays are paintings that nod to 20th century European modernist art, such as Russian constructivism.

Manhattan Oil Project In 2012, her public art project Manhattan Oil Project, commissioned by the Art Production Fund, was installed on the corner of 46th Street and 8th Avenue in New York City. Consisting of two monumental kinetic sculptures modeled after mid-20th century oil pumps, these 25 feet tall sculptures were inspired by oil pumps that the artist discovered in Electra, a boarded-up town once famous for being the pump jack capital of Texas. Placed in a vacant lot next to Times Square, the fully motorized pump jacks recalled the ruins of ghost towns, forgotten monuments of America's decaying industrial past.

In 2022, she received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

Selected Exhibitions

This is America: Selections from PAMM's Collection, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida, 2026 Signs and Objects: Pop Art from the Guggenheim Collection, Guggenheim Bilbao, 2024 Scenario for a Past Future, Hurley Gallery of the Lewis Center of the Arts, Princeton University, 2024 Moment Choisis, Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York, 2021 Josephine Meckseper, Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, and Hab Galerie, Nantes, 2019 MOSTYN Contemporary Art Gallery, Llandudno, 2019 America Is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2015 Storylines, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2015 2X (I) ST, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, 2014 Pop Departures, Seattle Art Museum, 2015 Taipei Biennial 2014-2015 The Brancusi Effect, Kunsthalle Wien, 2014 Mark Boulos and Josephine Meckseper, The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, 2014 Josephine Meckseper, Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, 2013 Manhattan Oil Project, Art Production Fund, The Last Lot, Times Square, 2012 “Josephine Meckseper,” The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, 2011 2010 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2010 Josephine Meckseper: Recent Films, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, 2009-2010 Josephine Meckseper, Kunsthalle Münster, 2009-2010 New Photography 2008: Josephine Meckseper and Mikhael Subotzky, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2008-2009 Josephine Meckseper, Migros Museum Für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, 2009 “Josephine Meckseper,” Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, 2008 “Josephine Meckseper,” Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, 2007

Public collections

Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles FRAC Nord – Pas-de-Calais, Dunkerque Kunsthalle Bremen Kunstmuseum Stuttgart Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich Museum of Modern Art, New York Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Pérez Art Museum, Miami Princeton University Art Museum Rubell Family Collection, Miami Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Filmography

04.30.92 (1992) Die Göttliche Linke [The Divine Left] (2003) Rest in Peace (2004) March on Washington to End the War on Iraq, 9/24/05 (2005) Mall of America (2009) Amalgamated (2010) Pellea (2018)