Catherine Wagner 'In Situ: Traces of Morandi' at Morandi Museum in Bologna

The #museo Morandi (Morandi Museum) is continually enhancing its collection through a program of temporary exhibitions aimed at juxtaposing Giorgio Morandi's works to those of artists who were inspired by him. Following Alexandre Hollan, Wayne Thiebaud, Tacita Dean, Rachel Whiteread, and Brigitte March Niedermair #museo Morandi is pleased to present #catherinewagner. 

From March 25 to September 3 2017 two rooms of the museum host the exhibition In Situ: Traces of Morandi,curated by Giusi Vecchi, featuring 21 works made by the American artist between 2015 and 2016.
 During her more than thirty-year career #catherinewagner has studied "constructed environments" as metaphors of the way we create our cultural identities. Wagner uses photography to investigate the different ways through which we have shaped the world. 
Over the last few years Wagner spent time in #bologna working in the studio of Casa Morandi, the former home of Morandi. Wagner also worked in Morandi’s Grizzana home, studying Morandi's rigorous structural process and his poetical still lives.

Wagner imagined new still lives with objects that the Bolognaise artist used to depict in his paintings, using them to create, both formally and conceptually, new compositions through repetition and the ephemeral nature of shadows.
This is how Shadows, the first series displayed in the exhibition, was born; only the projected shadows of the compositions were photographed creating de-materialized images, in which solid objects seem to be unreachable wrapped by the vibrant aura of their appearance. Morandi’s objects in Wagner’s photographs are relieved of their tangible presence and become ephemeral transcendent shadows.
In the other series, Wrapped Objects, the objects were wrapped by the artist in foil to provide a new skin that masked their historical patina, and reimagine them in an abstracted context. 
Within the color palette that appears at first sight in Morandi’s still lifes, #catherinewagner identified distinct areas of saturated color: hues of cobalt blue, amber, vermilion, burnt orange and chartreuse green. Wagner methodically recorded and classified these colors in order to choose corresponding colored gels that she affixed to the studio lights which created the color-fields enveloping the images. The seemingly objective titles refer to the catalogue numbers of the colored filters used by the artist, when she used two filters or the same filter twice, the title includes two numbers. 
In several works Wagner adopts a typological format that underscores the juxtaposition of differences and similarities, echoing Morandi’s seriality. With this artistic taxonomy Wagner addresses an incisive and systematic abstraction. #catherinewagner challenges the dynamics of representation-abstraction.  This approach has been pivotal to her process throughout her career. In particular in the featured works she analyzes how this dynamic unfolds through time, solidity and shapes.

Wagner has also produced two photographs that celebrate the landscape that the Bolognaise master used to contemplate, and paint from the windows of his workshop in Grizzana. 
In Situ: Traces of Morandi is accompanied by a bilingual Italian/English catalogue published by Edizioni #mambo, including an interview to the artist edited by Giusi Vecchi, and a critical article by Peter Benson Miller, Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy of Rome. The exhibition was made in collaboration with Anglim Gilbert Gallery of San Francisco, Luisotti Gallery of Los Angeles, and with help from the University of California Education Abroad program, #bologna. 
On March 24 2017 #catherinewagner will give a public lecture at #mambo, Conference Room, at 5.00 pm. On the same day at 6.00 pm the exhibition will be officially opened. 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

#catherinewagner (San Francisco 1953) is an internationally known artist. She deals with “site- specific” art and photography; she participated in conferences at American museums and colleges, and she is an art professor at Mills College in Oakland, California. She has received many awards including the Rome Prize (2013-14) and the Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2001 Time Magazine named her as one of the most innovative #people in the field of fine arts. She has presented several solo exhibitions at major American museums and her works are in the collections of many international museums including: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, the Yale University Art Gallery, the NY Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Folkwang Museum Essen.
www.catherinewagner.org  
www.mambo-bologna.org/museomorandi/
#catherinewagner
In Situ: Traces of Morandi
curated by Giusi Vecchi 
Istituzione #bologna Musei | #museo Morandi

25 March – 3 September 2017
LIST OF WORKS
All the works are archival pigment print
All works courtesy of the Artist, Anglim Gallery San Francisco and Gallery Luisotti Santa Monica


Shadows
# 017, 2015
95.3 x 127 cm
# 278 + 279, 2016
81.8 x 109.2 cm
# 007 (double), 2015
95.3 x 127 cm
# 061, 2015
95.3 x 127 cm
# 053 (double), 2016
Diptych 
76.2 x 101.6 cm each
# 156, 2015
81.8 x 109.2 cm
# 017 (double), 2016
57.2 x 76.2 cm
# 007, 2016
66 x 109.2 cm
# 278 + 007 (double), 2016
66 x 109.2 cm
# 750, 2015
95.3 x 127 cm
# 132, 2015
95.3 x 127 cm
# 278 (double), 2016
57.2 x 76.2 cm
Wrapped Objects
# 728 : 750, 2015
Diptych 
45.7 x 36.8 cm each




# 132 : 007 : 750 : 061, 2015
Quadriptych 
54 x 40.6 cm each
# 103 : 162 (double), 2015
Diptych 
45.7 x 36.8 cm each
# 728 : 750 II, 2015
Diptych 
      45.7 x 36.8 cm each

Grizzana Studio
Grizzana Landscape (Green), 2016
81.3 x 109.2 cm
Grizzana Landscape (Blue), 2016
81.3 x 109.2 cm
Grizzana Diptych # 600, 2016
Diptych 
50.8 x 38.1 cm each
Grizzana Quadriptych # 053 + 103 : 085, 2016
Quadriptych 
50.8 x 38.1 cm each
Grizzana Diptych # 053 + 103, 2016
Diptych 
50.8 x 38.1 cm each


Video
Catherine Wagner 
Selections from 1976 to 2016