Josephine Meckseper’s oil rigs drill, baby, drill in the Theater District (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Eighth Ave. at West 46th St.
Through May 6, free
artproductionfund.org
manhattan oil project slideshow
Born in Germany and based in New York City for many years, multimedia artist Josephine Meckseper examines consumer culture in her painting, photography, sculpture, video, and installation. Last year she turned the ninth floor of Chelsea’s FLAG Art Foundation into a kind of glitzy, high-end department store. Now she has installed two of her giant oil rigs on a vacant lot at the corner of Eighth Ave. and 46th St., where they apparently drill for buried treasure. The pair of red-and-black steel oil pumpjacks, which reach twenty-five feet high and weigh three tons each, have been placed within the caged-in area known as the Last Lot, a site the Art Production Fund and Times Square Alliance are using for public art projects in conjunction with owners the Shubert Organization. Inspired by abandoned old rigs Meckseper encountered in Electra, Texas, “Manhattan Oil Project” references politics and the state of the U.S. economy as it drills, baby, drills in the Theater District, an area where men, women, and children have been coming for more than a hundred years to be entertained as well as to strike it rich. As families lose their houses to the mortgage crisis as well as an increasing stream of natural disasters, there is more displacement than ever before across America, as well as an ever-widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, the one percent and the ninety-nine percent; Meckseper’s installation evokes this dichotomy while calling into question environmental concerns and, of course, the impossibility of it all, as no one is likely to find oil under Eighth Ave. Then again, miracles have been known to happen; shortly after “Manhattan Oil Project” was installed, a billboard for Jesus Christ Superstar rose over the lot, providing yet another angle through which to view the work.