PETER WEGNER: 
THE UNITED STATES OF NOTHING

March 31 – May 26, 2007

GRIFFIN is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Peter Wegner and the publication of P,E,T,E,R,W,E,G,N,E,R, a survey of the artist’s work from the last ten years.

The exhibition’s centerpiece, THE UNITED STATES OF NOTHING, is a vast field of darkness punctuated here and there by real American placenames like “Nix,” “Nada,” and “Nameless.” Rendered in white neon and installed on a single blue painted wall, the eighteen placenames and their exact geographical coordinates will be strewn across 400 square feet of the main gallery. Wegner's vision of America is both disconsolate and deadpan, its darkness leavened by the absurdity of names conjured out of nothing. As Wegner notes of this body of work, "The naming of a town is a strange thing indeed. It’s born of myth, odd circumstance, dire necessity."

In the west gallery, Wegner will exhibit three new portfolios of photographs: WINDOWS, WALLS, and WORDS. Each portfolio both insists on its stated theme and calls it into question. Windows might resemble mirrors or walls; walls are seen to be haphazard and contingent; words appear on both, as well as locations as diverse as a luggage cart, a back door, or a half-finished crossword puzzle abandoned in the grass.

Rendered in different shades of red, DOUBLE STANDARD – a neon work that concerns two American places sharing the same name ("Standard") – will be exhibited in the project room. In this piece, Wegner locates an identity crisis in progress – on the map, in the world, and attached to the wall of the gallery. It offers an implicit critique of American politics, the art world, or the nature of language itself. DOUBLE STANDARD also calls to mind both the “Standard” gas station paintings of Ed Ruscha and Marcel Duchamp's seminal work of conceptualism, Three Standard Stoppages.