ArtsZipper

Presented by Sheldon Art Galleries
With support from the Regional Arts Commission.
Visual Arts
General Audiences

Solitary figures in darkness and empty yet sculptural coats all serve as subjects of Berlin artist Jessika Miekeley’s work in photography. In her first one-person exhibit in St. Louis, Miekeley shows works from three series: Jacket, American Framing and Ground. Jacket, a group of images of coats on chairs, emphasize the sculptural quality of their forms and their ability to mirror human emotions. The series is an extension of a previous work, American Framing, in which Miekeley photographed a figure from the back framed from the knees upward against a series of surreal backdrops. The work alludes to a subversive notion of Romanticism, in which a pictorial space contracts rather than expands. Related to American Framing is Miekeley’s series Ground, in which a mysterious supine figure in the dark appears in various locations. The anonymity of the figure and the ambiguity of the situation speak to notions of presence, absence, loneliness, and the loss of place and home.