Strata Gallery presents Into the Thicket, its first solo exhibition of California-based artist Mirabel Wigon. The exhibition opens Tuesday June 18th, the artist will be present between 11am - 5pm opening day to answer questions.
Wigon’s work is comprised of abstracted landscape paintings that grapple with environmental phenomena resulting from, and related to, the built landscape. These paintings explore notions of progress, instability, and system collapse.
Wigon states, “It is wonderful to be a part of Strata Gallery and I am so excited to be involved in the Santa Fe Community. In my work I utilize various strategies to impede, encapsulate, reflect, and cast doubt on apparently benign natural spaces. Pristine and seemingly tranquil views are interrupted and broken. In historical bucolic landscape paintings, the aim was to exemplify humanity’s mastery over nature – a reflection of a cultural moment that wished to disrupt natural order to create a semblance of control over the land. I sincerely hope to make works that consider how a lack of control offers potent room for growth and renewal.”
Wigon received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Traditional Art from California State University, East Bay and her Master of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting from California State University, Long Beach. Her works have been featured in numerous group exhibitions both regionally and nationally. She is Assistant Professor of Art at California State University, Stanislaus. Wigon resides in the San Joaquin Valley of California and this is her first solo show in New Mexico.
Strata Gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday – Saturday. For more information about Strata Gallery, the current exhibit, and the future schedule of events, please visit the Strata Gallery website, Instagram, or Facebook.
Link to Strata Gallery website: https://www.stratagallerysantafe.com/exhibitions/mirabel-wigon
Show Statement:
The world we live in is contingent on, and influenced by, massively unpredictable systems that define an understanding of space, place, and depth. These systems control our conceptions of space and place, ranging from mediated information networks (mapping and surveillance among other computer-mediated communications) to agriculture and land stewardship frameworks. The inundation of information from these systems alters one’s experience of space through accumulation, imbalance, and overload. My paintings are a byproduct of this experience – a conglomeration of signs where the accumulation of imagery and painted layers creates a perplexing and tenuous notion of the “whole” built from many discrete fragments of perception. The resulting visual opulence displays experience, immersion, and separation within my immediate environment in all its grandeur, teetering at the edge of collapse. The tenuous balance between order and chaos in the work critiques the flawed modernist narrative of progress and innovation while exemplifying a range of environmental signifiers that are emblematic of the Anthropocene.
The paintings' surface complexity is a product of continual accumulation of visual imagery and materials. Digital maquettes and collages serve as source material for, and are constructed in tandem with, my paintings. The paintings transform through a process that weaves between the various stages of development, disrupting previous layers. The work contends with various painting languages of abstraction, naturalism, digital codes, and diagrammatic schemes to layer representations of a place, resulting in a compounded view. In my work, conceptions of place are augmented by multiple vantage points conflated upon a single plane. Spatial relationships are explored on the canvas through the juxtaposition of real and represented depth. Color accentuates these relationships, simultaneously reinforcing continuity and dissonance. Digital codes, botanical forms, and environmental conditions influence the large swathes of analogous areas which are broken by oppositional colors, creating instability and visual tension in the paintings. Fractured space, planar forms, shifting screens, and atmospheric conditions obfuscate and interrupt the viewer while simultaneously offering new visual pathways or conditions by which the work may be read. Much like the shifting visual emphasis in the viewer’s experience, changes in our environment are usually discovered in a non-linear fashion. In the paintings, these changes are exposed after prolonged looking. The scenes depicted in my paintings are contradictions where form and gesture take on multiple aspects, creating a nebulous space that amplifies anxieties yet offers hope in the face of uncertainty.