For more than three decades, Merrill Wagner has tracked the transmutation of form and the shifting vagaries of tone. She has incised lines of color into fragments of marble and let them
erode, and she has painted rectangular bands across steel panels
already marked by the erosions of rust and industrial sanding.
She tends to participate in her own aesthetic process instead of commanding it, but not, apparently, when making flowers.
Below, Thistle, rust preventative paint on steel, 90 x 47 inches. Individual pieces held in place on the wall with magnets.
Wagner likes to improvise with nature and also with the work of other artists, which in her hands becomes a kind of nature.
Two brands of Naples Yellow on Marble (8 by 11.5 inches) is an answer to similar work by Brice Marden, located somewhere between Marden’s magisterial marks and accident.
Her Northern (33 x 96 inches) could have been titled, Milton Avery in a steelyard.
Her Envelope (66 x 96 inches) looks like Christopher Wilmarth, had he lived long enough to forsake glass and discover color.
Instead of being imitative, her aesthetic is communal in nature and yet steadfast to its purpose. I don’t know if an exhibit devoted to Wagner and her family has occurred, but if it does, I’d like to see it. She’s married to Robert Ryman, and the work of both their sons (Cordy and Will Ryman) is rounding the curve and coming on strong in the stretch.
Wagner is at Traver though Aug. 2.
