Fifteen years of collected memorabilia from Mt Rushmore yielded the material for artist Mel Ziegler’s one thousand digitally printed portraits of the monument’s four presidents, currently filling the ground floor of Galerie Perrotin on the Lower East Side. Though repetition and systemization are key, the degradation of each image – suggesting they were lifted from cheaply made or tiny reproductions – leaves the most lasting impression. Despite the scale of the effort in the original Rushmore or Ziegler’s redo, there’s no guarantee that a burnished image will be handed down to posterity. (On view through Aug 16th).
