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Published on 7/25/08
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A one-dollar bill may not buy you more than a pack of gum, but would you ever cut it up until it became unusable? Brooklyn artist Mark Wagner would. His detailed currency collages compel viewers to reconsider the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America. In this show’s most jarring work, Reduct, he removes almost every recognizable image from the front of the dollar and arranges the repeated words “THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” and “FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE” in a border around an assemblage of empty bills.
By asking you to contemplate the dollar as an aesthetic object, Wagner calls attention to its normal function as a symbol used in monetary exchange. Although his collages amaze, by the time the viewer reaches Wagner’s portrait of a buck (as in, a male deer), the gimmick seems strained. Wagner also cheapens his work by selling his so-called studio notes alongside it. (These are $50 Post-Its that say “Call Mom,” not studies for finished pieces.) But these ephemera may fit into the jokey critique of capitalism hinted at in collages such as Marxism, which portrays not Karl but Groucho in a natty black suit, tie and boutonniere.
The advantage of Wagner’s unique medium and labor-intensive methods is that they evoke the usual range of responses to art—without letting you forget the economics that shape your experience.
