Leeza Meksin
Leeza Meksin
Walls Wearing Worlds
Walls Wearing Worlds is a full color catalogue documenting Leeza Mersin’s solo site-specific exhibition at Ortega y Gasset Projects January 18 - March 16, 2025.
Leeza Meksin’s work is characterized by an interest in the body: its shapes, sizes, and how it does (or does not) conform to the things it wears and the spaces it inhabits. In lieu of conventional figuration, Meksin alludes to the body by stretching yards of spandex mesh over the walls of the exhibition space, in some cases, from floor to ceiling. This transformation of architecture into bodily evocations sets the stage for her painting (on canvas, wood panel, and neoprene), to appear on top of, behind, and in-between the transparent fabric. Meksin’s paintings offer further plot-twists of materiality and innovation, combining paper pulp, fabric, paint, found objects, sundry trimmings, and other (sometimes curious) incidentals. Like magnets for the flotsam of the world, Meksin’s paintings suck up the material richness of the consumerist landscape, re-rooting these potentially forgotten items into a new aesthetic and personal relevance.
Leeza Meksin is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, installation, public art, and multiples. She is a co-founder and co-director of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run gallery and curatorial collective based in Brooklyn, NY. Meksin divides her time between Brooklyn and Ithaca, NY.
Walls Wearing Worlds is co-published by Ortega y Gasset Projects and Space Sisters Press with a curatorial essay by Eric Hibit and an interview with Jodi Hays and Leeza Meksin
Turret Tops and Before
by Leeza Meksin
Leeza Meksin: Turret Tops and Before chronicles Meksin’s site-specific outdoor installation Turret Tops on view at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA from August 24, 2019 to October 26, 2020, and other textile works and installations.
For Turret Tops, Meksin created two life-sized replicas of the deCordova’s iconic turrets that grace the museum building. Meksin’s turrets, installed on the grounds of the Sculpture Park, were dressed in brilliant plum and pink neoprene each with unique ornamental fastenings reminiscent of fashions used to adorn our bodies and architectural environments we inhabit. The installation prompted visitors to consider assumptions about clothing, gender, architecture, and ornament. During the summer of 2020, the outer layers of Turret Topswere removed to display the patterns left on the neoprene below after months in the sun. This publication traces this significant project throughout its 14-month exhibition period and includes extensive seasonal documentation showcasing the incremental material transformation of the installation. Additionally, this publication documents over fifteen different bodies of textile-based work created by Meksin between 2007 to 2021.
Turret Tops and Before features contributed essays and interviews by Lizzy De Vita, Wayne Koestenbaum, Sarah Montross, Eileen Myles, Sophie Pinkham, and Pamela Sneed.
Leeza Meksin is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, installation, public art, and multiples. She is a co-founder and co-director of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run gallery and curatorial collective based in Brooklyn, NY. Meksin divides her time between Brooklyn and Ithaca, NY.
Turret Tops and Before is co-published by Space Sisters Press and deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.
