Kristian Vistrup Madsen on Merrill Wagner
The 2 our bodies of labor by American artist Merrill Wagner, proven on two flooring, appeared so distinct as to be virtually irreconcilable. Downstairs, shiny fields of darkish browns and greens on giant metal plates held on the partitions. In a single such portray—Finnegans Lane, 1990, an imposing work of eight by twelve toes—a layer of emerald, a inexperienced of an otherworldly density, was flanked by strips of uncooked metal that seemed like cross sections of an agate. On the ground sat Untitled, 1996, a cluster of stones marked with blue paint, and Crooked Strait, 1995, a slender path of irregular items of slate shot via with a skinny line of white oil pastel. This fashion, someplace between Minimalism and Land artwork, is that almost all related to the artist, whose apply spans a formidable six many years. Wagner shares with the latter motion a priority with how supplies are affected by time and the atmosphere, but her artwork has a distinct vulnerability to it: a humility that’s shocking, given the obvious roughness and scale of the works. The impact is one in all solemnity, a uncommon form of dignity.
And right here is the place the small work up on the mezzanine made their incongruous but totally apt entry. These impressionistic photos of flowers and timber have been all produced en plein air between 1997 and 2001. Had been they not so apparently ugly, I’d say that they have been kitsch, however Wagner’s approach of working the paint—seemingly not solely with a brush however at occasions additionally with some tougher software, like a knife or spatula—ends in a efficiently blatant sense of corporeality. These are meadows and forests solely whenever you’re squinting or at a distance. Up shut, they make for a confrontation with the instability of notion itself—with the way in which wherein, at each second, flickering constellations of sunshine, coloration, and motion are morphing out of what we expect we simply noticed. On a sensible stage, they share with the metal and stone works a direct affiliation with nature, solely right here nature is known on very totally different phrases: as one thing intimate, delicate, and fleeting. The blossoms in Untitled (#14 June), 1997, are flowers as you’d discover them in your backyard—they could possibly be gone tomorrow, minimize or flattened by the rain. Untitled (#19 November), 1998, depicts the form of forest the place you may stroll your canine one morning and discover poetic transience in a sunbeam on autumn leaves.
The small work present nature as a part of a subjective relation to what’s actually shut at hand. Conversely, what was represented within the seemingly nonrepresentational works downstairs was nature as power and time in a geological sense. Compared to this, particular person expertise—a ray of morning solar, the sudden consciousness of a flower, or perhaps a complete life—is a mere speck. The stones Wagner painted have been there lengthy earlier than and can stay lengthy after her blue squares fade. That’s the complete level.
And so the 2 ends of the temporal spectrum for which Wagner has developed such totally different but equally acute languages don’t precisely meet. Reasonably, like two eyes straining to stay targeted, their disparity requires fixed effort to reconcile. Settle for the problem, and you can be rewarded.
— Kristian Vistrup Madsen
