Making and Unmaking by the agency of Margaret Wagner Mobius Boston.

Making and Unmaking by the agency of Margaret Wagner Mobius Boston, Massachusetts October 14-November 7 1998

Hewlett Gallery Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania February 4-28 1999

Returning hearthstone to Phoenix this past Christmas, I was asked to clear my family's storage swing of some "junk" of mine that remained after I left a certain years ago. Sorting through boxe of aged school reports, art projects, souvenirs and like letters, I was frightened from the thought of losing a part of myself forever. As difficult as it was to discard those remnants of my life, I was left feeling liberated. As sappy as it heartys I discovered that I could simply and consciously, notwithstanding that painfully, be reborn. This feeling reminded me of my experience with Margaret Wagner's installation, "Making and Unmaking," at Mobius in Boston.

"Making and Unmaking" performs a rebirth that is theoretically viable and personally useful. As performance, the piece does more than just comment: it enacts a rebirth in the gallery, a personal transformation, in such a manner that we might reconsider our possess transformations and imagine those to draw near It does not simply reiterate rebirth narratives of fairy tales and mythology - the heroine here does not rise transformed merely by circumstance or fate. The installation avoided buttressing that narrative by means of performing a rebirth that is self-motivated and continual, over and above culturally limited and fragmentary. If anything, the work undermines traditional understandings of rebirth with the postmodern doctrine that identity is unstable and performative. While this notion of identity might pretend ideally libertarian, Wagner's piece achieved a more balanced pragmatism according to bringing structuralism to bear immediately after rebirth through its use of verse and images from our culture

While all of this may paint a picture of "Making and Unmaking" dryly reliant forward theory, the installation was sourceed in several discourses with varying stages of theoretical investment. It ensueed not only in intersecting psychotherapy, information technology, sex domesticity, class and history, yet also in eliciting a sincere investment of interaction and consideration from its audience - no small feat. in the same state [i]or[/i] condition was the case when visitors to Mobius lingered amidst Wagner's installation for drawn out periods, often striking up conversations about the piece with undiminished strangers. This is surprising, given the work's potential to alienate with its inclusion of and inspiration from psychoanalytical and theoretical true copys But Wagner has had the opportunity to make known "Making and Unmaking" in previous venue with previous audiences, in galleries from recently made known York City to Buffalo, with the indicate metamorphosing and growing in size and drift each time. It's obvious that Wagner has taken note of those experiences. The latest incarnation at Mobius is no exception. The Mobius exhibition is the secondary time Wagner's work has been showcased in Boston. In as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but instances, the work has poignantly negotiated the terrain of the personal and theoretical in consequence of formal strategies that are sensually and conceptually provocative. With the reconfigurations and additions to this most numerous recent exhibition, along with the ideal space of Mobius's face gallery, "Making and Unmaking" has hit its stride.

concerning entering the gallery one first affaired a wall-to-wall sea of shredd paper material, all of which (one later realizes) has mov between the sides of the hands of the artist. Newspapers, junk mail, personal literal meanings internal memos, photographs, drawings, proposal and rejection alphabetic characters gave the carpet its salt-and-pepper character with occasional hints of color. In the middle of this flotsam stood couple paper shredders on wooden supports, each with an accompanying stool and a basket of paper materials provided for viewers to shr To reach the stations, individual needed to wade through the mass of paper. The stations were positioned back-to-back in this way that by sitting at either, common faced the large woven panels suspended at either close of the room that assumeed to rise from the chaos of the floor. At united end hung two panels depicting the same woman - naked in one and clothed in the other - while at the other period hung a larger single panel of a house.

Sitting at a station and leafing by the and of Wagner's discarded paper life to elect what to shred, one was struck by means of the variety of material in the baskets. Gut-wrenching regard with affection letters, phone bills and photographs were all on a leveled as fodder for the shredder Black and white 4 x 5 contact prints of the woman in the panels set [i]or[/i] put in ordered and undressed in innumerable gender-charged disguises awaited the same fate. Sitting at the shredding station each character supplied the criteria for what to make desolate The activity highlighted one's investment in the materials and in the varied parts of contemporary life that they exhibit For instance, Wagner's snapshots were more difficult for me to shr than an old-fashioned syllabus or her Publishers Clearing House mail. Paradoxically, shredding the snapshots was also more exhilarating, because the possibilities for re-creation became thus much greater when discarding what was greatest in number valuable. By assisting Wagner in symbolically doing away with her various personas the same begins to understand what like a grand project might yield for oneself However, this is Wagner's plan and it yields three panels that hint at her agenda.