WATCH THE WATCHERS
2018
Neon tubes, transformers, dead frame
14.0 x 34.0 x 5.0 inches
Edition of 10 + 3AP

WATCH THE WATCHERS is the tagline for FEDERAL, a body of work executed by Mary Ellen Carroll in 2003 while documenting all of the federal buildings in the US until 9/11. FEDERAL became a series of 24 photographs of the north facing façade of the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles (the western headquarters of many federal agencies). Carroll created a 24-hour movie of the north and south facade of the building, with the complicity of its management and staff in the process. The two-theater movie was subsequently exhibited at Storefront and screened at Cinema Village in 2005.

WATCH THE WATCHERS, informed by FEDERAL, is a work of art that Carroll envisioned in neon and that is being realized for the first time for LIT, Storefront’s 2018 Spring Benefit. The neon edition is produced in conjunction with Lite Brite Neon, and is available in an edition of 10 either in Safety Black or Safety Pink. The four original drawings as studies for the neon are also available in Safety Black, Safety Pink, as and two versions in Red, White and Blue. The drawings simultaneously function as the plan for the neon works, as well as being distinct works of art.

Mary Ellen Carroll‘s prolific career as a conceptual artist spans more than twenty years and primarily occupies the disciplines of architecture/design and public policy, writing, performance and film. The foundation of the work is the investigation of a single, fundamental question: what do we consider a work of art?

MEC is the recipient of numerous grants and honors, including the 2018 IASPIS Award by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, the Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship in the Visual Arts at the American Academy in Berlin in 2016, and a Graham Foundation Fellowship for prototype 180. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Pollock/Krasner Awards, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a Rauschenberg Fellowship, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, among others.

Her work has been exhibited at international institutions including the Perez Art Museum (Miami), Whitney Museum (New York), Generali Foundation (Vienna), Jacobs Museum (Zurich), Smart Museum (Chicago), ICA (Philadelphia), Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia University (New York), Renaissance Society (Chicago), Busan Biennial (South Korea) ICA (London), Museum für Völkerkunde (Munich), MOMUK (Vienna), and at Storefront’s gallery space. The work is in numerous public and private collections.