Josephine Meckseper
October 24, 2009–January 24, 2010
Kunsthalle Münster
Speicher II, Hafenweg 28,
48155 Münster, Germany
Phone +49-251-4924100 and 6744675
Fax +49-251-4927752
kulturamt [at] stadt-muenster.de
www.muenster.de/stadt/ausstellungshalle
Josephine Meckseper’s ominous bunker modeled after Virilio’s Bunker Archeology is a reminder of the time when the space of war crossed Europe from North to South. “By the same token,” Virilio commented, “you touch on the mythic dimension of a war spreading not only throughout Europe, but all over the world.” Bunkers, like anti-aircraft shelters, etc., are “reference points or landmarks to the totalitarian nature of war in space and myth.”
In Meckseper’s exhibit, from the life-size insect-like steel derricks to the chromium plates of cars, and from the abstraction of car rims to the metallic surface of the mannequins’ bodies, a new technological race-crossing species is in the making. It encompasses the sleek war-like display of SAAB commercials (0% Down, 2008) with jet planes bouncing in the background while the added 1990s industrial music keeps ironically asking: “Do you want total war?”
Josephine Meckseper’s exhibition invites us to look back on the ongoing imperialist saga not just in economic terms, but anthropologically: in times to come, cars, like dinosaurs, like America itself, will be relegated to the National History Museum. Discarded consumer products, even when glamorized by publicity, are just like body bags. Violence and death are still lurking around, although carefully kept under wraps.
Sylvère Lotringer
Josephine Meckseper’s work has been included in such prominent exhibitions as Morality, Witte de With, Rotterdam; New Photography 2008 at MoMA, Prospect 1 New Orleans, Resistance Is, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Brave New Worlds, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and a significant retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
On the occasion of the exhibition, JRP|Ringier has published a catalogue with texts by exhibition curator Rachel Hooper, Heike Munder, and Sylvère Lotringer in conversation with Paul Virilio. The catalogue is accompanying Meckseper’s exhibitions at the migros museum für gegenwartskunst Zürich, Ausstellungshalle zeitgenössische Kunst Münster, and Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston.
War and the Individual
February 19, 2010 – April 25, 2010
Opening: February 18, 2010, 7:30pm
The exhibited artists have a diversity of backgrounds. Some have experienced or survived war first hand. Others are outside viewers or empathetic observers or politically critical individuals who question their country´s involvement in war. The exhibition focuses on the personal and private experience. Representative for many involved in war, the participating artists will show their subjective perceptions of war and its consequences, along with their sense of pain, feelings of rage and helplessness.
Participating artists:
Liba Abdul
Marcel Dzama
Lukas Einsele
Parastou Forouhar
Ori Gersht
Barbara Hlali
Jenny Holzer
Sigalit Landau
Emily Jacir
Randa Mirza
Jean-Gabriel Periot
Stephen Prina
Martha Rosler
Gil Shachar
Helmut Smits
Ausstellungshalle zeitgenössische Kunst Münster
Speicher II · Hafenweg 28 · 48155 Münster · Germany
Phone +49-251-4924100 and 6744675 · Fax +49-251-4927752
kulturamt@stadt-muenster.de