UPPER WORLDS | MICHAEL WAGENER
18.09.2004 | 14.11.2004
Objective validity – that’s what maps promise graphically. Dots and lines create the reliability we entrust ourselves to, out of necessity or rather happily. Dots, lines and outlines also shape our mind’s image of the world.
-excerpt from Commas, Shoes, Routes – or: The Maps in our Mind by Stefanie Lotz
Michael Wagener’s practice responds to diverse artistic and scientific influences, brought together to visually describe and explain the fictionalized world in which we live. As Wagener indiscriminately combines political and geographic maps and illuminated globes in the making of his objects and images, he creates representations of undefined places built upon this atypical method of merging cartographic styles and forms. His detailed collages and expansive installations draw connections between art, scholarship, and history, and in doing so, the resulting work recalls a former time and place, one that is driven by the search for uncharted territory and the prospect of new discovery.
With the series Topografien 1, the artist exploits our familiarity of school atlases by dissecting and reconstructing maps into vaguely familiar, but geographically impossible, collages of fantastic landscapes. Oceans are organized into tidy geometric shapes, and complex landmasses are twisted into Spiral Jetty-like curves. Wagener’s Mobile Fashion (1999-2002) is a variety of functional clothing, ranging in style from a stolid business suit to the popular “hoodie” jacket, made entirely of paper maps. Wagener documents the clothes by choosing male and female models to be photographed while wearing them. While the overwhelming nature of contemporary fashion has, in many cases, become a sort of “walking advertisement” for corporate logos, Wagener’s beleaguered models literally have the weight of the world on their shoulders. Lampooning the chic lifestyle of Hollywood stars, the Mobile Fashions are both surreal and stylish, and suggest that a new wardrobe can transport the wearer into a glamorous, undiscovered world.
Living and working in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, Michael Wagener has exhibited in museum and gallery settings throughout Europe since 1992. Recent exhibitions include Landnahme, Galerie Pankow, Berlin (2004); show me your sexy urbanity, Ploizeipräsidium, Frankfurt/Main (2004); on the road again, Projektraum Galerie Engler + Pieper, Berlin (2003); ekko, Oslo, Norway (2002) and IN DER WELT SEIN, Goethe-Institut, Rome (1998). These, and various other projects have been documented extensively in periodicals and publications. Over the years Wagener has received numerous prizes in recognition of his artistic achievements, such as the Projektförderung gutleut verlag, Kunstfonds, Bonn (2004) and Venedigstipendium, Deutsches Studienzentrum Venedig (2003). Wagener's exhibition at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery will be his first solo exhibition in North America.
Organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Curator Joan Stebbins). Funding assistance from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and The Canada Council for the Arts. Catalogue co-produced with Cambridge Galleries.
