Title
Round
Collage
41 x 34 inches
Estimated Value Range:
$3,000 - $4,500
Starting Bid: $1,500
Bidding increments: $250
Jessica Mein (b. 1975, São Paulo, Brazil) is a Brazilian artist whose work spans across drawing, animation, and physical investigations of discarded billboards, often from her hometown of São Paulo, and hand-printed hemp bags from Dubai. Her art challenges traditional boundaries between image, surface, and structure, frequently questioning the very materials that support her creations.
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Jessica Mein
Artistic Practice
Mein’s work is deeply rooted in labor and construction, which is reflected in her use of the Portuguese word obra(meaning both "work of art" and "construction site") to describe her practice. She often repurposes images from obsolete billboards, especially in the context of São Paulo’s ban on outdoor advertisements, where the works subvert censorship by recycling these materials for new purposes. Mein’s process includes unthreading, puncturing, and unraveling canvas and fabric, reminiscent of the work of Lucio Fontana, to reveal the raw, structural elements behind the image. This deconstruction reveals the object's physicality, turning the artwork into both a finished product and a site of ongoing creation.
Mein also engages with the notion of tramas—a Portuguese word signifying both tapestry and entanglement—which relates to her intricate manipulation of materials. In her series Obra Quarenta e Quatro, the artist explores systems of production through obsolete billboard fragments transferred to hemp, a slow and labor-intensive process. Through her unthreading, cutting, and imprinting processes, Mein creates abstract compositions that juxtapose the image and its material base, emphasizing the relationship between surface and structure.
Notable Works and Exhibitions
Mein has exhibited widely in solo and group shows across the world, with notable exhibitions at El Museo del Barrio (New York), Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City), The Julia Stoschek Foundation (Düsseldorf), and the Drawing Center (New York). Her solo exhibitions include Obras at Simon Preston Gallery (New York) and Tramas at Galeria Leme (São Paulo), where she presented new wall-based works and large-scale spatial structures that further explore the boundaries between image and support.
About the Artist
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Mein’s work investigates the intersection of physicality, urban spaces, and the rapidly disappearing materials of the past. Drawing inspiration from the outdated billboard structures of São Paulo and the hand-printed hemp bags found in Dubai, Mein focuses on the obsolescence of visual culture and the labor-intensive production of images. Her artistic investigations emphasize the tension between the rapidly changing world of digital imagery and the slow, deliberate handcraft of her own work.
Currently residing in Dubai, Mein is a resident artist in the A.i.R. program run by Art Dubai, Delfina Foundation, and Tashkeel.
Selected Collections
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf
Museu de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo
