Artist reuses items with intent for new Fort Wayne exhibit

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) - The most Crystal Wagner has experienced of Fort Wayne so far is the coffee and the gallery inside Fort Wayne Museum of Art.

She has spent 12 to 13 hours each day working on her new body of work titled "Paroxysm," which opened Friday. Wagner, a formally trained printmaker, is known for her massive installation pieces that consume the space of each venue and has been creating these formless organisms for the past three years. She crafts the installations out of brightly colored, repurposed pieces of plastic tablecloth and chicken wire.

Wagner views her installations as a part of the same life cycle.

"The inspiration started as single-cell organisms. They were not very complicated, they seemed like they were blankets of material, and the design work was really simple. Then, slowly, they started to achieve more complicated design work and sculptural forms. They have full skeletons now, which is what I'm working on right now (at Fort Wayne Museum of Art). And then after the skeleton is complete, the flesh goes on.

"So, from this single-cell organism to a complex organism that it is now was over the span of three years of pushing the work and exploring."

Wagner has also created commissioned pieces for the band The Flaming Lips, Nike and media company Viacom, which featured a 117-foot piece inside its Times Square headquarters.

"Each installation is a brand new piece, so for the installation here, I'm responding to the space. I build site-specifically. I don't have any plans before I get on location. It's all about using the architectural environment of the canvas," Wagner says.

"When the work opens to the public, it will be a brand new mark based off the specific architecture of the museum, and there's some really beautiful qualities about this space."

Wagner says she takes about 10 to 15 minutes to get a feel of the environment before she begins crafting the installation. Because the exhibition space at the museum is the shape of a big square, Wagner says the most distinct attributes of the room is the space above the viewer's head.

"I knew immediately that the main emphasis would be a vertical thrust," she says. "What I wanted to present with the installation, even before I got here, is the title, 'Paroxysm,' this kind of violent expression."

Wagner says the pieces in the exhibition symbolize how growth cannot be contained to an "individual sanctuary." The concept is present in her six cut-paper pieces that will be installed on the walls of the exhibition space. Wagner often frames these sort of pieces within a shadowbox, but for this show, she wanted the pieces to be frameless to represent a sense of rebellion.

The concept for the exhibition is also expressed in how the installation will span from the floor to the ceiling.

"It will grow and find its way to the ceiling and into the crevices," she says.

Wagner doesn't believe in being stagnant, which means pushing herself and the work. With this show, she says she wanted to reveal more of the darkness lying underneath her use of everyday materials.

It calls attention not only to society's relationship with the environment but also to consumer culture in a way that is unavoidable. With her pieces consuming the space, it's hard to bypass them.

"All of the materials in the installation are repurposed and reused. So, some of it is three years old, and I just take it down over and over again. So for me, it's important that there is a darkness to it. It's celebratory because of the color palette, but (like) exotic flowers, if you eat them, you can die," Wagner says.

"I mean, there is something there about the way we interact with exotic forms and structure in nature. It's like, we want to celebrate them for how beautiful they are, but we're not completely cognizant of the fact that they're poisonous for us. There is that tension, and that's something that I really want to work with specifically in this installation. Because, while the main form itself will be colorful, there will be a push to make it more intense, and I'm going to be bringing in a new element into this one, which you will able to see when it opens."

The local installation will also mark the final time Wagner expects to use the materials for an interior installation - for a while, at least. Her next project takes her to Poland, where she will be building an installation piece made of hot air balloon materials that will wrap the exterior of a building.

"If you pour everything that you are into something, I think people see it and they can feel it. I work 12, 14, 16 and 18 hours a day on all of this," she says. "It's like being thoughtful, and really thinking through not only what you're doing, but also being present in all of that.

"That's one of the things I'm such an advocate for, because I think we have these opportunities in our lives to push ourselves in certain directions, and I've been passionate about being an artist since I was 4. I don't ever want to remain stagnant or feel like there's no growth. Then the problem-solving stops, and then my brain would get bored, and I don't want to get bored. I want to keep moving forward."

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Source: The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette, http://bit.ly/2aWg1Gb