Faculty Members Leeza Meksin and Sheila Pepe Exhibit in BAM’s 2018 Next Wave Art
Visual Arts faculty member Leeza Meksin and adjunct faculty member Sheila Pepe both currently have site-specific installations in BAM’s Next Wave Art exhibition, Towards a New Archeology, which seeks to bring “together a group of artists working to reevaluate the history of material culture—presenting installation and sculptural works that speak to a mystical, transcendent, and visionary future.”
Leeza Meksin’s installation is running through January 14, 2019 in Diker Gallery Café and Lepercq Space, Peter Jay Sharp Building in Brooklyn, NY.
Sheila Pepe’s installation is running through January 6, 2019 in Dorothy W. Levitt Lobby, Peter Jay Sharp Building, Brooklyn, NY.
Leeza Meksin is known for her inventive and unconventional public art works and in her installation, according to BAM, she has “render[ed] layers of industrial mesh, surgical gloves, sheets of vacuum formed plastic, and Spandex to flatten the space between the manufactured world and the body. These complex compositions of synthetic skins are informed by architecture as well as bondage and costume design. Embedded in Meksin’s aggressive works, all of the materials band together to transcend common perceptions about gender, confronting mass production of late capitalism and the edges of queer identity.”
An alumna of BAM’s Next Wave Art, Sheila Pepe’s installation “builds upon details in the existing architecture, filling the entire length of the vaulted ceiling with an extensive crocheted yarn web. Responding to the classical ornamentation found throughout the building, Pepe draws connections between the history of craft, feminism, and the production of reimagined spaces. In addition, she has produced a site-specific wall drawing based on the shadows of the yarn installation, adding another temporal layer that speaks to the residual impact this work has in a future tense.”
Meksin is an interdisciplinary artist, who makes paintings, installations, public art and multiples. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Miller Contemporary, NYC (2017) and a 2-person show at GBS, Los Angeles. Meksin has created site-specific installations at The Lenfest Center for the Arts, NY, NY (2017), The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City (2016), The Kitchen, NYC (2015), BRIC Media Arts, Brooklyn (2015), Brandeis University, Waltham (2014), Cosign Projects, St. Louis (2011), and in a National Endowment for the Arts funded project at Artspace, New Haven, CT (2012). Her work has been exhibited at Regina Rex Gallery, NYC (2011, 2014), Airplane Gallery, Brooklyn (2014), Primetime, Brooklyn (2013), Adds Donna, Chicago (2011) and Thomas Erben Gallery, NYC (2009). In 2017 Meksin was awarded a summer residency at The Banff Centre in Canada. She is the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist grant (2015) and the co-founder and director of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist run gallery and collective. Her work has been featured in BOMB magazine, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Rail and The Village Voice.
Since 1994 Pepe has had numerous solo exhibitions at venues throughout the United States including: Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston; Rowland Contemporary, Chicago; The Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, CA; Susan Inglett Gallery, New York; Thread Waxing Space, New York; University Gallery at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Visual Arts Center, Richmond, VA; Weatherspoon Art Museum, NC; and Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, CT. During that time Pepe has also participated in many group exhibitions, including: Shared Women, (2007) Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, (2007) Museum of Arts and Design, New York, Decelerate, (2006) at the Kemper Museum, Kansas City; The Photogenic, (2003) ICA, Philadelphia; Greater New York, (2000) P.S.1, New York; Elbowroom Tredja Sparet, Stockholm (1997) and Gothic, (1997) ICA, Boston. Her work is held in a number of private and public collections including: The Jersey City Museum, The Rose Art Museum, and The Harvard University Art Museums.