2014 Catalogue Archive

Brazilian artist Jessica Mein is known for her expansive body of work, ranging from animation to drawing, along with a continuing physical investigation of salvaged paper billboards from her hometown of São Paulo. In this work, obra quarenta e quarto, the title translates from Portuguese ‘obra’ as either ‘site of construction’ or ‘work of art’ and ‘quarenta e quatro’ as ‘forty four,’ communicating to the viewer a system that classifies her creative process while also alluding to the idea of production. The work is created from obsolete billboard material that is transferred onto hemp, and is then painstakingly unthreaded to make a compelling composition of abstract and geometric forms. Mein has exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, New York; The Julia Stoschek Foundation, Dusseldorf; Wellin Museum, Hamilton College, New York; Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico; Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai; The Drawing Center, New York; New York University, Abu Dhabi; and Harvard University, Cambridge, among others. Her work is included in collections at MoMA, New York; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf; and Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo.