What better exhibition to open in Frieze week than one that co-opts consumer culture in order to critique its cold, shiny appeal? Josephine Meckseper’s vitrines and wall works, shown in the UK for the first time in any number here, employ elements used in high-end retail display, from slat-walls and metal stands to chrome shelves and fluorescent strip lights. To these, she piles on consumer products such as umbrellas, sunglasses, a black lace stocking on a mannequin leg, and objects that refer to both culture and power: a photograph of actress Tippi Hedren as the icy blonde in Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ for example, or a plastic eagle that might sit on a desk or car. Everything is then conjoined by Meckseper’s own abstract paintings.
While these multipartite works certainly highlight how the aesthetics of consumerism are used to seduce, the problem is that they illustrate that idea a little too well. Like an undercover cop who’s so far under that he’s gone native, Meckseper’s careful, rather tasteful arrangements of objects and art – where everything is given equal value – work so well together that they are in danger of losing their critical faculties. What brings it all back to subversion, rather than mere collusion, is a three-minute video showing in the back gallery. To the soundtrack of a persistent electrical hum (which permeates the entire gallery space), the camera shows what could be the aftermath of a photo-shoot in a department store. Obscured by dry ice, anonymous technicians dismantle cables and light stands, while displays of objects, similar to some of those in Meckseper’s installations, are glimpsed through the haze. There’s something far more sinister in this short piece of footage than in any of Meckseper’s shiny, pretty things.