papered wall combines reminders of an obsolescent cold war with the pattern of kefiyah scarves favored by Palestinians and protesting hipsters alike.   Mirrored display cubes and wall-mounted shelves round out the complement of fixtures, but on them consumer products are juxtaposed side-by-side with paintings, collages, sculptures, and photographs evoking counter-cultural activity, including the artist's own documentary images from the anti-war protest in Washington on September 24 of this year.  

Meckseper's work equates our induced desire for fashion and luxury goods with the manipulations of media-driven ruling regimes, but it likewise compares both of these to their supposed antithesis in political protest movements.   Partisan politics is just another status symbol.   Radicalism quickly becomes radical chic, which is presented as just another formal element to be fetishized and sold in a museum cum gallery cum boutique that nostalgically samples utopian dreams from the Russian Constructivists to 1960s hippies.   As the curators of the 2005 Lyon Biennale write,

in Meckseper's work politics becomes a style, and commitment an object to be displayed in a chic display cabinet, suggestive of those in museums and ethnographic societies.   Through this approach, Meckseper explores the questionable links the media establish between images of political news, the fashion industry and advertising