Obras exhibition view at Simon Preston, New York 27 Nov - 22 Dec 2013
PRESS RELEASE
Simon Preston Gallery is delighted to present Jessica Mein's second solo exhibition at the gallery, opening on Sunday 17 November and running until 22 December, 2013. Known for an expansive body of work including animation, video, collage and drawing, the artist continues a physical investigation of salvaged paper billboards from her hometown of São Paulo.
The exhibition comprises of a series of wall-based works and two large-scale floor-based wooden constructions. Mein derives many of the collages from obsolete billboard material, methodically choosing areas containing mechanical printing errors, and at times folding or further cropping to reveal minute detail, before transferring the dismantled image onto canvas or hemp. In addition to employing physical processes of scanning, cutting, ripping and masking, Mein delicately and painstakingly unthreads the fabric structure of the surface to reveal the wooden architectural support, reducing the final work to a composition of abstract, geometric forms.
Each individual work is titled obra, translated from Portuguese as alternatively 'site of construction' or ‘work of art’, and takes the very support and surface of the image as its foundational component. The process of transforming printed, mass-produced, graphic advertising images engages tensions between modernist aspirations of mechanization and the variety of glitches and errors inherent in the mechanical, the digital, and the handmade. This dislocation raises questions of value and hierarchy of production and economy of visual language.