Through Feb 13, 2011.
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami is presenting the first museum exhibition in the United States for German artist Jonathan Meese, renowned for his multi-faceted work, including wildly exuberant paintings that mix personal hieroglyphics and collage, installations, ecstatic performances, and a powerful body of sculptures in a variety of media.
Jonathan Meese: Sculpture focuses on Meese’s three-dimensional work, including his first ceramic talisman created when he was 15, small assemblages and dioramas from the beginning of his career that have never been shown before, massive bronze sculptures, recent large-scale ceramics, and models and set designs for theatrical and operatic productions. Jonathan Meese: Sculpture is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and is curated by MOCA Executive Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater. It is part of the museum’s Knight Exhibition Series.
Although all of Meese’s work flows from a philosophical position he has defined for his artistic pursuit, sculpture is the way he gives permanence to his ideas. As Bonnie Clearwater notes, “These figures essentially are frozen surrogates for Meese and the various guises and manifestations of the forces of good and evil that he creates in his performance work.”
This exhibition comes at an important moment in Meese’s development. Surveying his work of the last ten years, he finds that his complex installations have “put viewers on the wrong track” about him as an artist. With their abundance of materials they seem chaotic. However, the organization was very simple and based on layering one item over another until the surface of the walls is covered in a curtain of images and objects. The aim of the exhibition is to direct viewers’ attention to each piece in order to slow down the looking process.
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)
770 NE 125th Street
North Miami, FL 33161
305.893.621
www.mocanomi.org
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