Just in time for the July 4th weekend, PAVEL ZOUBOK GALLERY is presenting the exhibition MARK WAGNER: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, featuring the artist’s monumental 17 x 6 foot currency collage Liberty, a 1/11 scale play on New York City’s iconic “Statue of Liberty” with fanciful additions and alterations of metaphoric weight. The exhibition also features recent mixed media collages expanding on Wagner’s signature use of the U.S. Dollar bill. The opening reception was on Thursday, June 30 from 6-8pm and the show continues through August 12.The gallery is located at: 533 West 23rd Street (between 10th & 11th Avenue.)
MARK WAGNER’s Liberty is the result of a decade-long exploration into the intersections of art, culture and politics. It is a hybrid work of collage and documentation reproducing Frederic Bertholdi’s sculpture Liberty Enlightening the World. Made of 81,895 pieces cut from 1,121 U.S. Dollar bills, no source material or subject matter is more familiar to the American public, yet the translation of the ubiquitous dollar into this reimagined American icon is mind-boggling. Dozens of George Washington figures inhabit the collage, each engaging in mythic, historical and metaphoric narratives – often times battling against an omimous Gingerbread figure that has featured prominently in Wagner’s work. Built up around the statue’s base is a fantastical garden filled with allegorical tableaux and architectural forms; cut-away sections within the statue expose mysterious inner-workings. Beyond its humor, beauty and spectacle, Liberty addresses issues of economics, civil liberties, American self-image, and artistic practice.
For the current exhibition, Wagner has designed a special mount and viewing platform that allows the public to examine the collage in greater detail. An accompanying archive trunk chronicles his year-long process and features some 395 production notes, “Washington” models, an 80-minute time-lapse film showing its construction, and various reference sources.
Included in Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death are some thirty recent works in which Wagner employs a range of new methods and materials, including letterpress printing, wood and bronze sculpture, even abstract painting and collage (in collaboration with artist Joey Parlett). Wagner continues to insert his particular brand of word play and satire in everything he touches, proving that a seemingly limited material – the dollar bill – is for him limitless. The artist continues to visually and conceptually pose and answer the question: What are all the fabulous things one can do with money besides spend it?
Mark Wagner is a co-founder of The Brooklyn Artists Alliance and has published under the name Bird Brain Press and X-ing Books. His work is in numerous public and private collections including: the Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, the Library of Congress, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Getty Research Institute, and The Brooklyn Museum among others. Recent exhibitions include the Smithsonian Institution National Portrait Gallery, the Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College, Iowa; and the Oakland University Art Gallery, Michigan. This is Wagner’s third exhibition with Pavel Zoubok Gallery.
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