13/02/2022
Congratulations to Megan Marrin for her site-specific mural @swissinstitute in New York. On view until September 2022.
In Megan Marrin’s practice as a painter, meaning is extracted from cultural and historical relics. Found images of obsolete or unfamiliar equipment used for exercise, hygiene, containment and punishment serve as material to create stark, careful studies of such objects.
340 E. 9th Street is a painting of a photograph that accompanies an article published in the April 29, 1968 issue of New York Magazine about the spread of public art across New York City. In the image, the building located at the titular address is shown in profile, adorned on its windowless side with a mural by pop-surrealist Allen D’Arcangelo (1930-1998).
In 340 E. 9th Street, Marrin’s first public artwork, the readymade image from New York Magazine is outsourced to Colossal Media, the largest hand-painted outdoor advertising company in the world, rendered a block away from the original location of D’Arcangelo’s dreamscape. As such, 340 E. 9th Street frames an artwork of the East Village layered over by time and maintained in memory and documentation.
Picture 1 and 2: Megan Marrin
340 E. 9th Street, 2022
Swiss Institute
Picture 3 and 4: Megan Marrin
Barre 7, 2021
oil on canvas on styrofoam
38 x 229 cm
#meganmarrin #swissinstitute #efremidis @mmarrin_