Should we be surprised that our capitalist economy infiltrates and drives our most important decisions? The current health care debate is a case in point. Ethical and moral priorities are left in the passenger seat while fiscal concerns are elevated to the forefront. The moral compass is easier to ignore when it points away from the money. In her current exhibition at the Blaffer Gallery artist Josephine Meckseper takes on politics, economics, and violence, binding them up with a swath of bright red presidential debate carpet to establish a complex series of propositions related to America’s capitalist political system.
Meckseper’s product display’s, video, and replication of a presidential debate set may at first seem overly simplistic in their approach. It is easy to say that she is merely making the statement that capitalism is bad and that America has been forever lost in a hazy, economic induced fever. This is certainly part of it, but between those lines lie a more complicated set of problems and assertions. 0% Down features a mash-up of car commercials set to an assaulting, bass-heavy, techno soundtrack that pounds images and sound into the darkened projection space. A Saab jet morphs into a car before hurtling out of a hanger, linking together military technology with a civilian automobile in a terrifying collage. Seen in this context the advertisements are ridiculous. Have we been so conditioned to these kinds of images that meld sex, violence, and power together in the form of an automobile that we don’t even think twice? The irony is that no one gets to drive the way these car commercials choose to portray it, and we instead sit in traffic, or race at 25 mph to the next stoplight in our car ‘born from jets.”
If it seems like i have more questions than answers about this exhibition its because that’s the case, and i think the real strength of Meckseper’s work. She is not creating beautiful contemplative objects in the traditional sense of the term, though many of her displays are quite seductive and rightly so, after-all, consumerism is all about being seduced. Her work hinges on examining the complex problems in the relationship between economics and politics and forcing you to ask questions about those systems. The result is an exhibition that wriggles its way under your skin and into your subconscious. This is not unlike the best advertisements and political propaganda out there, and really it shouldn’t be any other way.
Images from the Blaffer Gallery website. Left to Right. Josephine Meckseper, 0% Down, 2008. Josephine Meckseper, Save a Bundle, 2007. Josephine Meckseper, The Children´s Crusade, 2006.
1 response so far ↓
Jennifer Romanick // 11/10/2009 at 5:12 pm |
I am a docent at the Blaffer Gallery and have given several tours of this exhibit to middle-school aged children. I had hoped that they would have been more open-minded, and some of the were, but the majority of the group just didn’t understand it. I asked questions like “why do you want the $200 sneakers and not the $30 pair?” or “Why do cosmetic companies put pretty girls in their ads and not average looking women?” Seeing the blank stares on their faces has, to me, solidified Meckseper’s theory that we are seduced, rather mindlessly, by the media to purchase one product over the other.