PETER WEGNER:  WHAT & WHERE

ED RUSCHA: Insects (1972)

March 18 - April 29, 2006

GRIFFIN is pleased to announce two exhibitions:  WHAT & WHERE,  new work by Peter Wegner in the main and west galleries, and Ed Ruscha’s Insects (1972) in the project room.

In his forthcoming exhibition at GRIFFIN, New York artist Peter Wegner once again turns his attention to systems involving language. WHAT & WHERE, Wegner's eighth show at the gallery, introduces two related bodies of work. Both feature silkscreened text and code numbers on painted canvases.

In the main gallery, Wegner shows WHAT, a body of work based on library classification systems. A seventy-panel painting based on the Dewey Decimal system serves as the exhibition's focal point. Several smaller works feature category headings from the competing Library of Congress system. Installed side-by-side, the panels – with their various colors and competing typefaces – resemble books lined up on a bookshelf. One such work reads: “CT999 Blank Books / GR940 Mythical places / M5000 Unidentified Compositions / BT960 Invisible worlds.”

In the west gallery, Wegner shows WHERE, a body of work consisting of the zip codes and place-names of American towns on monochromatic canvases. One piece lists all 84 towns named with adjectives: “47283 ALERT / 27589 ALERT / 38604 ASKEW / 88314 BENT / 65015 BLAND / 57522 BLUNT / 21020 BORING / 35548 BRILLIANT…” Another reads like the fractured narrative of a western: “48413 BAD AXE / 68822 BROKEN BOW / 36431 BURNT CORN / 44022 CHAGRIN FALLS / 99575 CROOKED CREEK ...” This deadpan tone continues with individual pieces that consider a wide range of subject matter including sex, numbers, commerce and color. According to Wegner, in this work he "reads the atlas as poetry."