Jonas Mekas
OUTLAW: NEW WORKS
June 27 – July 29, 2014
Opening Thursday June 27, 6-9pm

Jonas Mekas, Outlaw: Letters from the gallerist to the artist (#5), 2013
xerox collage and acrylic on paper, 12 x 12 inches

I dedicate this Exhibition to all artists
who had to go or are going through long
money draining and annoying “dispute” trials with
their gallerists.

This show marks the occasion of
my own “dispute” court case concluding
its Fourth year.


– Jonas Mekas

Microscope Gallery is very pleased to announce OUTLAW: NEW WORKS, a solo exhibition by Jonas Mekas opening Thursday June 27 and continuing through Monday July 29. Mekas, who is internationally renowned for his work with the diaristic form in avant-garde cinema, poetry and more recently installation and photography, debuts in OUTLAW his new “OUTLAW Xerox diaries” and “acrylic & watercolor” diaries. The catalyst for the exhibition is the end of the 4th year of litigation of an artistic court case with a former gallery.

Inspired by the tedious legal process, the new artworks in OUTLAW also mark the first time the artist – a man who was captured by the Nazis after fleeing his native Lithuania because of his political writings and later in the 60s arrested for screening films deemed obscene (Jean Genet’s “Un Chant d’Amour” and Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures”) – has been moved to present the sobering and often absurd reality of art and the law.

Works include a series of 12 black & white Xerox collages, “OUTLAW: Letters from the gallerist to the artist,” in which Mekas combines elements of email texts with imagery relating to Dante’s descent into Hell. “Fragments of Paradise”, 12 acrylic & watercolor paintings and photographic prints, offer variations on Mekas’s idyllic “frozen film frames”, images which are composed from sequential 16mm film frames. And in some, the prints become the canvases on which the artist for the first time alters and enhances his previously captured moments of natural beauty. In addition, the new, short video, “Sing. Sing to me, Blackberrybird”, premieres on installation.

Jonas Mekas, Fragments of Paradise series (installation view)

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JONAS MEKAS was born in 1922 in Semeniškiai, Lithuania and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Mekas was brought to the US along with his brother Adolfas in 1949 by the UN Refugee Organization. Within weeks, Mekas borrowed money to buy his first Bolex camera and began to record brief moments of his life. Mekas is now among the most influential makers of avant-garde film and a master of the diaristic form.

His works are shown regularly in the US and internationally including solo exhibitions during the past year at Serpentine Gallery, London; Stadtmuseum, Wiesbaden; Centre Pompidou, Paris; James Fuentes gallery, NY; DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague; MUAC, Mexico City; Krinzinger Projekte Vienna; National Museum of Art, Washington, DC. Mekas’ works have previously exhibited at Moderna Museet, Stockholm; PS1 Contemporary Art Center MoMA,Queens; Documenta, Kassel, Galerie Du Jour, Paris; Venice Biennale, Venice; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne among many others.

Mekas has also published more than 20 books of prose and poetry, which have been translated into over 12 languages. He was co-founder of the influential Film Culture magazine and wrote his “Movie Journal” column at the Village Voice for 20 years. He also founded the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in 1962, and in 1964 the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives. Both are still in existence today. Jonas Mekas is represented by James Fuentes Gallery in New York.

For preview and other inquires please contact: info@microscopegallery.com

Jonas Mekas, Outlaw: Letters from the gallerist to the artist (#3), 2013, xerox collage and acrylic on paper, 12 x 12 inches

Jonas Mekas with his Litigation Binders, June 2013

All images are copyright and courtesy of Jonas Mekas © 2013