For intermedia artists, installing a show is never a simple task. Where for artists working in more traditional media might simply ship the work off to a curator to install, for artists working with sound, light and moving parts, installation is not an afterthought, but part of the work. That’s why on Black Friday, when many of her colleagues were jostling their neighbors in big box stores, Wendy Wischer was on a plane to Miami.
She was catching up to the materials she had shipped the previous week, part of an install at the Haitian Cultural Center during Art Basel-Miami Beach. It’s the second work she has installed in the city over the past month, a period in which she also installed “Trapped Within” at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts as part of the New Narratives exhibit. And in her studios (there are multiple) she’s working on new sculptures, experimenting with projections and casting fiberglass trees. It’s easy to see why the University of Utah professor is the recipient this year of a Utah Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowship. In this month’s Artist Profile, Wischer talks with us about her work, her studio and the importance of light.
To see more of the artist’s work, visit www.wendywischer.com.
The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.
Categories: Artist Profiles | Visual Arts
Masterful.
An entirely engrossing artist and piece.
I think at root she is an artist that manipulates form, primarily for the achievement of certain light effects,
In a manner that I would call phenomenological.
She handles stimuli and effect, sensory experience and reception, different resonances of light,
While the object, the work of art, is the avatar of that light for the manifestation of these phenomena.
What I find consistent about the artist throughout, without exception, is not light,
But something she touched on briefly and this is fragmentation.
We see it over and over, from the small pieces of glass in the sculpture to the silver leaves, the drawing,
The displaced phenomena of the light itself, craft, nothing is a singular structure but all a compendium
of displacement of fragmentation that when subjectified by the subject, or phenomena of light,
Assume a new reality of unity and purpose.
Having spent so many years in the UK… I am very familiar with Channel 4 documentaries.
They are some of the best.
There is always an absent author and an omnipotent subject that creates a fluid narrative.
While the elements of film technique may be minimal, this is used to best effect,
Allowing for a mature internalization of the nuances being captured in the words of the artist and the shot.
Your video, Shawn, is very much like Channel 4. Clean. Minimal. Loaded. Sophisticated.
I always get excited when I have one to watch.
Thanks for the introduction to this visionary artist.
I saw her work at New Narratives and it was ephemeral and transcendent.
Ehren