Jessica Mein
Known for an expansive body of work including animation, video, collage and drawing, Jessica Mein physically investigates salvaged paper billboards from her hometown of São Paulo. 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.
Mein’s work has been exhibited at institutions such as El Museo del Barrio in New York, Wellin Museum, …
Known for an expansive body of work including animation, video, collage and drawing, Jessica Mein physically investigates salvaged paper billboards from her hometown of São Paulo. 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.
Mein’s work has been exhibited at institutions such as El Museo del Barrio in New York, Wellin Museum, Hamilton College in New York, Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, The Drawing Center in New York, New York University Abu Dhabi, Harvard University in Cambridge, among others.
Courtesy of Simon Preston Gallery
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
The Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Simon Preston Gallery, New York, NY
Galerie Leme, São Paulo, Brazil
