New York–based artist Josephine Meckseper (b. Lilienthal, Germany in 1964) is known for her large-scale vitrine installations and films that challenge the conventional reading of familiar cultural imagery and the systems of circulation and display. Her work, which encompasses a variety of media—simultaneously exposes and encases signifiers such as art historical references, and everyday objects, to form an investigation into the collective unconscious of our time. Conflating the aesthetic language of early twentieth-century industrial design with her imagery of political undercurrents, she investigates how early Modernism and the avant-garde developed into a form of political and aesthetic resistance to Neoclassicism and capitalism.
Meckseper's most recent work entails a series of films capturing the fragility of the months since March 2020, and spectral paintings contouring this new moment in history conceptually. In these new works, the artist silhouettes objects and books from her studio, as well as elements of nature, to suggest their presence, while removing their physicality from the composition. The implicated objects serve as an analog record of our current temporal environment, creating a tension between their materiality and the illusion of a decaying urban archaeological landscape.
In 2022 Meckseper received the Annual Guggenheim Fellowship and was appointed a Princeton University Visiting Fellow. In November 2022 the artist will have her first exhibition with Simon Lee Gallery Hong Kong.
![Artwork: Josephine Meckseper, Pellea[s], 2017-2018](https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_800,h_800,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto:good/artlogicstorage/slg/images/view/dd61197f6be172675671eb14be4af5d4j.jpg)
