Baller

Is it an art show? An app launch? A viral beach ball giveaway? Meredith Rosen Gallery is pleased to present Baller, artist Jennifer Rubell’s first public exhibition in nearly a decade. Baller is both an exuberant, laugh-out-loud exploration of neo-macho startup culture, and the dead-serious launch of Attune, Rubell’s new AI texting app that promises to eliminate self-doubt before you press send. With Baller, Rubell turns the mechanics of a product launch into the material of an exhibition: hype, access, virality, scale, male ease, social risk, disruptor culture, and the fantasy that saying the right thing at the right moment might change everything. Free for a Month is a monumental painting of a QR code that gives viewers complimentary access to Attune. The titular work Baller is an immersive merch installation of thousands of beach balls in Attune’s signature navy-and-cream palette, which visitors are invited to take in whatever quantity they can carry. Young Man with Phone is a live month-long performance featuring a hunched-over twenty-something in a hoodie, endlessly absorbed in his device: the archetypal male figure of our time. The performer’s number appears on the wall label, where visitors are invited to hit him up. Jennifer Rubell (b. 1970) is an American conceptual artist whose work centers on the viewer’s physical and emotional engagement with the object. She works in a wide variety of participatory mediums ranging from interactive sculpture, painting and video to food performance. Select performances and exhibitions include: Landscapes at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland; Old-Fashioned, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Creation, for Performa, the New York performance art festival; Made in Texas and Nutcrackers, at the Dallas Contemporary; So Sorry, at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto; The de Pury Diptych at the Saatchi Gallery, London; and Icons, at the Brooklyn Museum. Rubell received a B.A. in Fine Arts from Harvard University. She lives and works in New York City. This is her fourth exhibition with Meredith Rosen.