WESTERN EXHIBITIONS Mark Wagner + Derek Fansler & Scott Wolniak

March 4 to April 8, 2006

Mark Wagner:Tags and Bills

+

Fansler & Wolniak:
Concerning New Phenomena in the Ethereal World,
Volume 1: The Buddy Cycles

and

in The Drawing Room
Books from gallery artists

Mark Wagner images here
Fansler & Wolniak images here
Artist book images here

Mark Wagner:
tags and bills

plus

Derek Fansler & Scott Wolniak:
Concerning New Phenomena in the Ethereal World,
Volume 1: The Buddy Cycles

and in the Drawing Room:

Nicholas Frank
The Nicholas Frank Biography, pp. 211-212

Books from gallery artists:
Adriane Herman, Nicholas Frank, Eric Lebofsky
and Stan Shellabarger
as well as
Vincent Como, Terence Hannum, Damara Kaminecki, Paul Nudd and maybe more

SHOW DATES:
March 4 to April 8, 2006

Opening Reception:
Saturday, March 4: 6 to 9pm

Wagner's work strives to create the foreign from the familiar, and he singles out the one-dollar bill as " the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America." His exhaustive collage process employs an array of handling... reproducing the effects of tapestries, paints, engravings, mosaics, and computers-striving for something bizarre, beautiful, or unbelievable. In addition to several smaller bill pieces, Wagner will be unveiling the plans and first completed panel of "Liberty", a 16-foot tall reproduction of "The Statue of Liberty" made from 1000 $1 bills.

Wagner's handling of clothing tags (those little branding labels found on the inside neck of your shirt) is more straightforward... as patchwork re-combinations of tags in collages, artist books, and an awe-inspiring sport coat. These works too make use of overlooked, common items in profuse and beautiful juxtaposition.

Mark Wagner's work is collected nationally and internationally by dozens of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His work has shown at The Metropolitan Museum, The Getty Research Institute, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Renaissance Society, The Milwaukee Art Museum and the Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York. Wagner lives and works in Brooklyn.

DEREK FANSLER
& SCOTT WOLNIAK

Derek Fansler and Scott Wolniak will show a new video, "The Buddy Cycles, Volume 1" as well as the sculptures (marionettes, really) used in the filming. "The Buddy Cycles" are a series of video shorts based loosely on the cinematic 'buddy movie' genre. The 'actors' in the film are self-portraits of Fansler and Wolniak in the form of marionettes. In "Volume 1", Fansler and Wolniak draw upon interests in nature, folk art, improvisational music, mysticism, fashion, extreme sports, the sublime, existentialism, and their own friendship to construct a collaborative tale of life, death and rebirth. At the heart of this series is the structure of seasonal transition and the thesis that time can and should be completely wasted.

"The Buddy Cycles" builds upon Fansler and Wolniak's 2004 exhibition at Dogmatic, where they unveiled their first collaborative work, a video where marionette self-portraits traversed from Suitable gallery to Dogmatic. Fansler and Wolniak, both Chicago-based artists, ran Suitable gallery in an immaculately converted garage behind their building, from 1999 to 2005. Both artists live in Chicago, received their MFAs from the University of Illinois-Chicago and have exhibited widely, both nationally and locally.