Peter Wegner:
Absence of Field
March 13 – May 15, 2010
2902 Nebraska Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90404
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info [at] griffinla.com
http://www.williamgriffingallery.com
William Griffin Gallery is pleased to present ABSENCE OF FIELD, its tenth exhibition by artist Peter Wegner. In this new series of works, the unifying element is physical absence, starkly rendered by the forms that remain. The resulting works push abstraction toward its endpoint. According to Wegner, these new works are “notable for what they lack: a unified field of color, a unified plane, a unified theory to explain it all away. The object has been emptied out. It’s the art of what isn’t there.”
Increasingly, Wegner works between disciplines. A forthcoming suite of projects for the new University of Colorado Art Museum gives evidence of the strong architectural affinities found in his work. For this project opening in September, Wegner will work both in formal exhibition spaces and ancillary spaces rarely considered for the display of art – utility closets, restrooms, hallways and private offices through the museum building.
In October, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will mount two epic wallworks by Wegner. One project will involve Wegner’s mapping of hundreds of housepaint colors and names across a curved eighty-foot wall. Another project involves the installation of recent SFMOMA acquisition of a work by Wegner in wallpaint and neon, THE UNITED STATES OF NOTHING.
Wegner is also working closely with Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business on their development of a new campus scheduled to open in March of 2011. In his capacity as consulting artist, he will realize a series of works across various media and distributed throughout the new GSB campus.
Now on permanent display at The Phoenix Art Museum is Wegner’s massive sculpture GUILLLOTINE OF SUNLIGHT, GUILLOTINE OF SHADE composed of 1.5 million sheets of paper. A related sculptural installation occupies four floors of the new Vdara building at MGM’s City Center complex in Las Vegas. It involves paper sculpture built into two opposing walls and a light sculpture that animates the space between them.
In recent years, Wegner’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Los Angeles, and New Zealand. Notable New York solo exhibitions include LEVER LABYRINTH at Lever House in 2006 and COMPLETE & FINAL COLOR THEORY at The Bohen Foundation in 2004. Dakota and, after many years in Brooklyn, New York now lives in Berkeley, California.
Wegner is a graduate of Yale University.
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Image above:
Peter Wegner
Limits of Language 1, 2010
Photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer
