Catherine Wagner: San José Museum of Art, California - Paradox Observed

Catherine Wagner: Paradox Observed
San José Museum of Art, California
Through August 18, 2019

Catherine Wagner: Paradox Observed is a visual investigation of science to critically examine the systems through which we attempt to decipher the codes and structures of human existence. Catherine Wagner borrows tools and methods of scientific research, using imaging devices like the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and scanning electron microscope (SEM) as a camera to capture biological matter—the cross section of an onion and the textured surface of a shark’s tooth—with analytical clarity and larger-than-life scale. In the hands of an artist, scientific tools and the data they record evade their perceived objectivity, suggesting a paradoxical conception of the scientific endeavor and its desire and struggle to empirically understand the nature of our being.

“Catherine Wagner encourages the visitor to reexamine the everyday. Pomegranate Wall lends itself to considering her creative process of studying, composing, and creating. At San José Museum of Art, we are committed to fostering awareness of artists’ contributions to society. As we present this exhibition, we invite the public to reflect on Wagner’s examinations of the every day,” S. Sayre Batton, Oshman Executive Director, San José Museum of Art.

Catherine Wagner’s immersive installation Pomegranate Wall is the center of the exhibition, a glowing 8-by-40-foot arc of photographs taken with an MRI machine. Made following a two-year Artist Residency Fellowship SJMA awarded Catherine Wagner in 1997, Pomegranate Wall is the culmination of her exploration into scientific institutions where her photographic documentation and use of technologies like the MRI machine act as a counterpart to scientific research. Imaged in reverse of a camera—from the inside out, rather than the outside in—cross-section scans of pomegranates resemble human cells under a microscope. Monumentally scaled and clinically backlit in Pomegranate Wall, Catherine Wagner’s images possess the authoritative weight of scientific inquiry. But their abstraction presents a paradox: these seemingly pure images are constructed. Though composed of real data, their order and classification—the modes of analyzing visual information—are fundamentally impacted by the observer.

Catherine Wagner was born in 1953 in San Francisco. She received her BA in 1975 and MA in 1981, both from San Francisco State University. She is the recipient of major awards, including the Rome Prize (2013–14), a Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA Fellowships, and the Ferguson Award. Her work is included in major museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Art, Houston; and the San José Museum of Art.

SAN JOSE MUSEUM OF ART
110 South Market Street, San José, California
sjmusart.org

Catherine Wagner: Selections, 1980-2000, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco

Catherine Wagner

Selections: 1980 - 2000

Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco

February 28 - April 14, 2001

The STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY announces it is now representing the work of CATHERINE WAGNER. This is her first exhibition with the gallery.

This 20-year survey exhibition features a cross-section of photographs from Catherine Wagner's oeuvre, beginning with those taken of the George Moscone Convention Center Site in 1980, up to her present photographs taken with medical imaging devices. The underlying theme throughout Wagner's work is decoding the times in which we live by using models such as construction sites, classrooms, homes, and science. Making a comment on change, Catherine Wagner captured the vast construction site of Moscone Center, planted between high rises, with the steel skeleton of a colossal arch girded by wooden beams. She presented a kind of archaeology in reverse, a harbinger of eventual ruin. Catherine Wagner uses the photograph as a catalyst for the transformation of ideas and information.

Among the series on exhibit is American Classroom. The classroom is shown as a model and a repository of our collective conscience. Andy Grundberg wrote about Catherine Wagner's work in The New York Times, "…as a result the classrooms seem like archeological sites that, if studied long and hard enough, might yield the keys to understanding our civilization." These classroom studies prompted Wagner's interest in our human culture revealed through science. Also exhibited are selections from Catherine Wagner's series Art & Science: Investigating Matter in which she examines the construction of contemporary culture through science.

Catherine Wagner's work is characterized by firmly ensconced compositions, crisply defined forms, meticulous attention to detail and seemingly infinite tonal gradations. Her photographs are devoid of human presence although they are fraught with the traces of human acts and passages. Each of the series represented in this survey was an independent travelling museum exhibition.

CATHERINE WAGNER will have a solo exhibition, "Cross Sections", at The San Jose Museum of Art in November 2001. Her work is in several public collections including: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum of Modern Art, NY, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Whitney Museum of American Art.

STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY

49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

www.wirtzgallery.com