Sheldon Art Galleries Features Four Series of Works By Berlin Artist Jessika Miekeley

Sheldon Art Galleries features Four Series of Works By Berlin Artist Jessika Miekeley

 

ST. LOUIS, MO - The Sheldon Art Galleries presents Jessika Miekeley: American Framing, September 25, 2009 - January 9, 2010 in the Nancy Spirtas Kranzberg Gallery. Please join us for an all-gallery opening reception on Friday, September 25, 2009 from 5 - 7 p.m.! Galleries will be open until 8 p.m due to The Sheldon concert featuring Bettye LaVette. NEW Gallery Hours are Tuesdays, Noon - 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, Noon - 5 p.m.; Saturdays,

10 a.m. - 2 p.m. and one hour prior to Sheldon performances and during intermission. Admission is free. For more information on the exhibition visit the galleries' website at www.thesheldon.org/galleries.asp.

Solitary figures in darkness and empty yet sculptural coats all serve as subjects of Berlin artist Jessika Miekeley's work in photography. In her first one-person exhibit in St. Louis , Miekeley shows works from four series: Jacket, American Framing, Heads and Ground. Jacket, a group of images of coats on chairs made in 2009, emphasize both the diversity of their forms but also focus on their sculptural and metaphorical possibilities, rather than their collectivity as "typologies." In this body of work, the artist deals with a variety of issues including elements of the artist's practice such as the editing process, but also their possibilities to mirror human emotions. Jacket is an extension of a previous work, American Framing, also on view, in which Miekeley examines compositional elements within American cinema in which subjects were filmed from the back from the knees upwards. The work alludes to a subversive notion of Romanticism, in which a pictorial space contracts rather than expands. Related to American Framing are Miekeley's series of drawings titled Heads, and the photographic series Ground, in which a mysterious supine figure is found in various public places. The anonymity of the figures in Ground and the ambiguity of their situation encourages viewers to create their own narratives. Miekeley's photographs do not address issues of sublime but instead speak to notions of presence, absence, loneliness and the loss of place and home. They can also be read as psychological portraits of the self and the other.

Jessika Miekeley received her Masters of Fine Art degree from Goldsmiths College , London in 2002 and a Masters (Meisterschülerin) degree from the Hochschule der Künste , Berlin in 1999. She has exhibited widely in Europe including at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin ; the Centraal Museum , Utrecht ; Bochumer Filmfestival; Deptford X, London; and Galerie Springer & Winckler, Berlin . In St. Louis , her work was included in Light Works and Water Works at the Pulitzer Foundation, Saint Louis and in two exhibitions at the Ellen Curlee Gallery.

The not-for profit Sheldon Art Galleries exhibits works by local, national, and International Artists in all media. Over 6,000 square feet of the galleries' spaces on the 2nd floor are permanently devoted to rotating exhibits of photography, architecture, jazz art and history, and children's art. A sculpture garden, seen from both the atrium lobby and the connecting glass bridge, features periodic rotations and installations, and the Nancy Spirtas Kranzberg Gallery on the lower level features art of all media. The Sheldon actively supports the work of St. Louis artists in all mediums and features a dedicated gallery with museum-quality exhibits by St. Louis artists, past and present.

Financial Assistance for this project has been provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency. Support is provided by the Regional Arts Commission and the Arts and Education Council.

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