Whitehot Magazine

It Was Never Really a Decision: Moments Choisis.

image Inside you, the time in you, and she don’t fade…
The ghost in you, she don’t fade

- Psychedelic Furs 1984

 

By JAMES SALOMON July, 2021

An interview with Josephine Meckseper during her residency a
t the Elaine De Kooning House in East Hampton.

One of the great things to be in this studio is the spiritual aspect of the house… so late at night you’d hear all these little sounds of air purifiers and air conditioners… it kind of creates an industrial melody as the spirit of the house and connection to Elaine, who, coincidentally, had a feature role in a silent movie in the 40s where she played a witch. The film takes place in Wading River on Long Island. It’s called “The Dogwood Maiden.”
 

Elaine de Kooning and Rudy Burckhardt in a frame of  The Dogwood Maiden (1949) by Rudy Burckhardt, Photo courtesy Jacob Burckhardt
 

So, using that as a starting point for the film series that I’ve been doing for Guild Hall, it incorporates some of the more haunted aspects of the scene and landscape around here. It also speaks to the paintings that I have been making.


Josephine Meckseper artworks at the Elaine De Kooning House studio. 

The objects in the compositions are things found here in the house. I would cut the shapes and create these ghostly outlines to give our sense of time during the pandemic, how time was moving much differently. Nobody could remember what day of the week it was, where a month would feel like a half a year, so I felt like it was a good reason to create this ghost that is present but also has passed. The same thing happened in the film, where everything is black and white where it’s very much in the moment but anticipating its’ own past in a sense. The work looks very formal but it’s conceptual because it takes in consideration all these different layers of how time moves, how we changed during the pandemic, and how the pandemic changed us.

 

Not yet titled, 2021

 

Josephine’s film series is currently being presented at Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York  www.guildhall.org

Josephine Meckseper, film still from “Moment IV: Snakes for Dessert”, 2021



Chris Byrne’s Elaine De Kooning House artist residency program was founded in 2011 and has hosted many great artists, including most recently Lonnie Holley, Virginia Prescott, Joe Bradley, Eric Haze, Keith Mayerson, Sedrick Huckaby, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Celeste Dupuy Spencer…www.elainedekooninghouse.org


  

James Salomon

is the Director of Design Projects at Achille Salvagni Atelier in New York. He occasionally writes and takes pictures for various art, design, and lifestyle publications.

www.achillesalvagni.com
www.salomoncontemporary.com

Photo: Lori Hawkins

 

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