Merrill Wagner: Nature

In its emphasis on the materiality and mutability of paint, Wagner's inventive work elides traditional categories of painting, relief, sculpture, and installation. Emerging in the 1960s, at a time when minimalism and postminimalism had superseded abstract expressionism as the dominant aesthetic idioms, Wagner both eschewed and embraced their primary concerns, creating rigorous, hard-edge abstract compositions that subtly referenced landscape.

Among the earliest works in the exhibition, a monochromatic hard-edge painting from 1966 features a large circle delineated with a thin, curving line set against a uniform ground. This composition can be read simultaneously as a study in color and form and also a waning moon, introducing from the outset the coexisting dualities that would come to characterize Wagner's oeuvre.

In the mid-1970s, the artist began to look to other materials such as tape, which she had previously employed in some works, to guide her compositions. Rendered on plexiglass or paper, and enhanced with pencil, oil paint, or pastel that lends her compositions an atmospheric feel, the tape works on view retain Wagner's earlier emphasis on form but represent an important evolution in her practice wherein process and form become intrinsically linked and the transient nature of her material is revealed. In works such as Untitled, the tape is complemented by an abstract field of lightly applied oil paint that conjures Turner-esque atmospheric conditions.

The exhibition also explores Wagner's investigation into the creative possibilities of using found and nontraditional materials—a practice that was further spurred when she received a large quantity of slate chalkboards and fragments that had been removed during the renovation of P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York.

While the artist had previously used slate as a support for her paintings, with this donation it became Wagner's primary focus during this period. In Knoll, an abstract composition—made from lightly applied strokes of oil, pastel, and crayon—traverses four differently sized rectangles of slate, creating a rolling peak that alludes to the grassy formation for which the work is named.

Wagner's works in slate find their apotheosis in works such as Outerbridge Crossing. Standing six feet tall and almost as wide, the monumental slate sculpture reads at once as a mountain range, a seascape, a quarry, and a horizon line. Composed of rectangular planks of varying sizes as well as a small curved fragment, the geometry of the work is further accentuated by vertical bands of blue paint. The undulating form of the work, which takes its name from the bridge that spans between New York's Staten Island and New Jersey, is reminiscent of both the structure itself and the body of water across which it stretches.

A product of the urban environment of New York—where Wagner has primarily lived and worked since the late 1950s—and the landscape of her youth in the Pacific Northwest, the steel paintings seamlessly juxtapose the organic and the industrial. Using primarily rust-preventative paint on cold-rolled steel, Wagner applies swashes of color to the steel's glossy surface. These reflective works, with their industrial materiality and their bands of grays, blues, and whites, are reminiscent of both color field painting and minimalist sculpture.

Reflecting on the connection between her steel paintings and the natural world, the artist noted: “The hillside looks different every minute. It's always changing. And certain aspects of nature, such as flowers, are intimate. You can pick them. And they're temporary. But if you look at the ocean, or if you go to the desert, you can't influence it in any way. It doesn't care about you. You just have to be there as a little observer. If you go up a mountain, you might witness a landslide or avalanche far away. I think that the larger paintings, the steel paintings, are more about that kind of experience.”

Composed of fragments of marble and slate, the present work unites two of Wagner's preferred material supports. As the title suggests, the sculpture features two sections of Mars Violet paint, a deep purple with bluish-red undertones. Resting on the floor instead of a pedestal, it evidences the artist's interest in the natural world and upends traditional notions of sculpture. The work was featured in the artist's 2016 solo exhibition at the New York Studio School.

Working in both abstract and figurative registers, the artist moves seamlessly between these different modes of expression that for her are linked in both form and content to the natural world, each in turn informing the other. Her small, impressionistic landscapes are yet another way in which she seeks to paint time.

These intimately scaled oil paintings, which were created en plein air at Wagner’s farm in Pennsylvania, feature the deep reds of fall leaves, the snow-whites of winter, and the vibrant yellows, pinks, and lavenders of spring and summer blooms. Often titled after the month in which they were painted, these compositions chronicle the effects of the changing seasons year after year.

Also on view is a group of wall-mounted reliefs begun in the 2000s that conjure the form of plants and flowers. These works evolved out of the artist's earlier compositions that featured bands of color applied using rust-preventative paint on rectangular sheets of cold-rolled steel.