Jordan Seiler: ‘Revisions’
curated by Clémence Mailly
March 29 – April 01, 2018
2 Rivington Street,
New York, NY
10002
New York City – March 21st, 2018, Parasol Projects is pleased to present Jordan Seiler: Revisions, curated by Clémence Mailly.
After a recent solo exhibition with Harlan Levey Projects in Brussels, and for the first time in New York City, the show will feature the artist’s newest pieces from the Labor series.
For the past fifteen years, Jordan Seiler has antagonized the relationship between outdoor advertising and public space. From large-scale collaborative civil disobedience actions taking place on the streets, to the slow dissemination of Public Access sculptures which happen to open bus shelters around the world, to a gallery practice that illuminates the inner machinations of advertising content and persuasion, Seiler’s practice attempts to challenge the commercial discourse that monopolizes public space while cultivating engaged citizenship. At its heart, Seiler’s work asks viewers to contemplate what it would mean to remove advertising from public space, use its profits to cultivate alternative public discourses, or live in a city where aggressive civil disobedience constitutes a legitimate expression of citizenship.
The Labor series interrogates the work we do in service of the outdoor advertising industry as we move through public space and subconsciously make meaning of the myriad images that invoke our attention. By removing advertising imagery and obscuring it behind layers of plexiglass, the artist reduces the advertisement to a faint whisper of its former self. The advertising becomes at the same time a physical afterimage, but also a tangible representation of the everyday labor we all put in the service of advertising and commercial media, consciously, but more often subconsciously. Alongside the Labor Pieces, Seiler will present a new sculptural light work, NYC Fluorescent 1, that challenges the private property rights we offer the outdoor advertising industry. Taken together these artworks use the common materials of outdoor advertising to investigate how the industry uses our city streets to monopolize our collective attention in public space.
A RISD graduate, Jordan Seiler is a New York based artist and activist working with issues of advertising and collective agency in public space. His work has been an inspiration for global activist projects like Art in Ad Places, Brandalism, No Ad Day, exhibited internationally at the U.S. pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, ICA Boston, Austin Museum of Digital Art and International Poster Biennale in Warsaw, and featured in The New York Times, The LA Times, El Pais, New York Magazine, Hyperallergic, and BOMB magazine, among others. Jordan is represented by Harlan Levey Projects and will present new work at the Dallas Art Fair opening on April 12th, alongside selected pieces in a collaborative exhibition presented by HLP and Anton Kern Gallery. In addition to opening the Revisions exhibition with Parasol Projects, Seiler has created an experimental augmented reality project for BOMB magazine issue #143 with dancer and performer Suzie Rezcnick available for download on iOS and Android on March 29th in conjunction with the Revisions exhibition opening.
