Peter Wegner

Peter Wegner (born 1963) is an American artist whose works consist of paintings, photographs, collages, prints, artist's books, and large-scale installations. His pieces are included in major public and private collections worldwide.

Early life and education

Wegner was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He earned his BA at Yale University. He works in multiple media, ranging from paintings and photography to large-scale installations and wall works.

Themes Critics and scholars have identified at least four major themes in Wegner's work.

Systems The first theme is the idea of systems and their hidden inadequacies. As architectural scholar Noah Chasin wrote in a 2007 essay, "Systems often make appearances in Wegner's work to suggest the potential for order, yet the artist continually exposes them as means of introducing disorder… e systematically questions their foundations from within so that the very integrity of each system's signifying capacity is compromised…." However, Chasin advises viewers to see this aspect of the artist's approach as a constructive rather than a destructive one: “We should not conclude that Wegner’s subversion eliminates meaning but instead that it draws our attention to the way that meaning is created and naturalized.” More than a decade earlier, Meltzer linked his use of color with market mechanisms. She wrote of the paint chip works that "...there is always the problem of capital and its ideological effects. After all the paint chip is an advertising tool—a ploy to make a buck on a dream. Wegner's work makes these systems palpable, not through barefaced institutional critique, but by quietly elbowing some room into their rigid structures or—as he says in his book The Other Today Is the One You Want (2002) by opening up the space between the lines’ and pushing back the horizon.’" The installation included monumental paint chip-based paintings and sculptures made from colored paper, either stacked vertically or arrayed in horizontal, hedge-like rows.

Wegner followed in 2005 with "Lever Labyrinth," a human-scale maze composed of 2.2 million sheets of stacked paper––all in various shades of green, creating columns of subtly gradating color––constructed inside the Lever House building.

In 2008, Wegner executed the major paper installation "GUILLOTINE OF SUNLIGHT, GUILLOTINE OF SHADE" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The piece consisted of 1.4 millions sheets of die-cut paper in 40 hues, arranged to create two 12’ x 26.5’ x 7" color gradations inside the museum: a wall progressing from blue to yellow in one gallery, and a wall progressing from yellow to red in another. Wegner arranged each neon unit according to its relative geography on a midnight blue-painted wall meant to stand in for the continental U.S.

Stanford University commission Stanford University commissioned Wegner to create four permanent installations on the campus of its Graduate School of Business. In a Los Angeles Times feature on the works, arts writer Jori Finkel noted, that it was "...an unusual project in many ways. Most public art is inserted into a landscape after the fact, but Wegner's artworks were integrated into the campus… And though most university art tends to be committee-sanctioned or boring, Wegner's suite of works for Stanford are thought-provoking in ways that his supporters have come to expect." Similar to "THE UNITED STATES OF NOTHING" and "WAYS TO CHANGE," it uses an LED display to continuously cycle through pre-programmed groupings of text.

Collections The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York The Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California The J. Paul Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California The Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany The Museum of Modern Art, New York City The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York City The New York Public Library (Spencer Collection), New York City The Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California The San Jose Museum of Art, California The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California The United States State Department, Kabul, Afghanistan The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut The Yale University Sterling Library Special Collection, New Haven, Connecticut

Permanent installations HELL-WHISKEY-GUNS-MUD-MICHIGAN, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan (2014) MONUMENT TO CHANGE AS IT CHANGES, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Palo Alto, California (2011) MONUMENT TO CHANGE AS A VERB (THE ADVERB WALL), Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Palo Alto, California (2011) MONUMENT TO THE UNKNOWN VARIABLES, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Palo Alto, California (2011) MONUMENT TO THE FUTURE OF DREAMS, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Palo Alto, California (2011)

Lectures The Stanford University MFA Program, Palo Alto, California (2013) TEDxEast, New York City The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Illinois (2012) The Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona (2010) The University of Colorado Art Museum, Boulder, Colorado (2010) The Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand (2007) The American Academy in Berlin, Germany (2005) The Bohen Foundation, New York City (2004) Printed Matter, New York City (2002) The Cooper Union, New York City (2000) Art in General, New York City (1999)

Artist's books and monographs BUILDINGS MADE OF SKY (2012) ON, OFF, VIA, VERSUS, BESIDE, BEYOND, DESPITE, CONCERNING & UP AGAINST: THE WALL (2010) TERRA FIRMA INCOGNITA (2009) P,E,T,E,R,W,E,G,N,E,R, (2007) LEVER LABYRINTH (2005) A,N,S,W,E,R,S,&,Q,U,E,S,T,I,O,N,S, (2004) THE OTHER TODAY (2002) PETER WEGNER, 11" x 8 1/2" x 3/8," offset litho on coated paper, 128 pages bound, ed. 1000, 2001 (2001) THE BLUE BOOKS (1998) REMARKS ON COLOR (1997) AMERICAN TYPES (1997)

Exhibitions and projects Installation view of Wegner show "Terra Firma Incognita" at William Griffin Gallery. Photographed by William Griffin Gallery "In Focus: Architecture," The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California (2013) "Kubus: Peter Wegner," Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany (2012) "Skyscraper: Art & Architecture Against Gravity," Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois (2012) "ParaDesign," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2011) "THE UNITED STATES OF NOTHING," The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2010) "In [ ] Veritas," The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2010) "How Wine Became Modern," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2010) "The More Things Change," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2010) "Wall-to-Wall-to-Wall," CU Art Museum, Boulder, Colorado (2010) "Brave W [The Winnebago Project]," The University of Colorado Art Museum, Boulder, Colorado (2010) "archiTECHtonica," The University of Colorado Art Museum, Boulder, Colorado (2010) "New Art for a New Century: Contemporary Acquisitions, 2000–2010," Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California (2010) "Machine for Living Color," Museum of Modern Art Library, New York City (2008) "247 and Counting: Recent Architecture and Design Acquisitions," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2008) "Cut: Revealing the Section," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2008) "Terra Firma Incognita," Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand (2007) "Selections from the Permanent Collection," Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (2006) "Lever Labyrinth," Lever House, New York City (2005) "Extreme Abstraction," Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2005) "PETER WEGNER: COMPLETE & FINAL COLOR THEORY SUPERSEDING ALL PREVIOUS THEORIES & PRE-EMPTING ALL FUTURE THEORIES WITH ADD’L THOUGHTS ON THE POETRY OF COMMERCE, THE CRUELTY OF SYSTEMS & THE BANALITY OF THE GRID, ACCOMPANIED BY A FOOTNOTE RE: ARCHITECTURE," Bohen Foundation, New York City (2004) "Amerika – Europa: Ein künstlerischer Dialog," Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Germany (2002) "Auswärts – Werke aus der Sammlung Rosenkranz," Universität Witten/Herdecke, Germany (2002) "Objective Color," Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (2001) "Of the Moment," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2000) "Re-drawing the Line," Art in General, New York City (2000) "Hands on Color," Bellevue Arts Museum, Washington (1999) "Re: structure," Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, Grinnell, Iowa (1999) "Then and Now and Later: Art Since 1945 at Yale," Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1998) "Art of Four Decades," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (1998)

Press "Palaces Made of Sky," Il Post, Italy, January 12, 2015 (feature, illus.) Adrian Lobe, "I Explore the Urban Maze," Wiener Zeitung, Vienna, Austria, May 26, 2014 Liz Stinson, "The Secret Cities Hidden Between NYC Skyscrapers," Wired, February 20, 2014 (illus.) Mark Byrnes, "These Mind-Bending Pictures Turn Manhattan's Sky into Skyscrapers," The Atlantic: City Lab, February 10, 2014 (feature, illus.) Paul Petrunia, "In Focus: Peter Wegner," Archinect, February 3, 2014 (interview, illus.) "Buildings Made of Sky: Photographer Peter Wegner Inverts New York Skyline," Huffington Post (UK), January 25, 2014 (illus.) Alexi Drosu, "Exhibitions: Architecture in Photographs," Form Magazine, October 14, 2013 Julie Grahame, "Peter Wegner's Building Made of Sky," Magical Urbanism, March 13, 2012 Fanny L'Eglise, "Peter Wegner: Buildings Made of Sky," L'architecture D'aujourd'hui, March 2012 Jori Finkel, "Peter Wegner at Stanford: The Art of Innovation," The Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2011 ON, OFF, VIA, VERSUS, BESIDE, BEYOND, DESPITE, CONCERNING & UP AGAINST: THE WALL, Essay by Lisa Tamiris Becker. Published by Cu Art Museum, University of Colorado, Boulder, 2010 Bill Wyman, "Installing a Major New Work at the Phoenix Art Museum", Phxated.com, November 25, 2009 Leah Ollman, "Peter Wegner at Griffin," Art in America, October 2009 Ara H. Merjian, "Cut: Revealing the Section", ArtForum, April 2008 Cynthia Houng, "10 Questions for Peter Wegner," KQED Interview, May 30, 2008 Glen Helfand, "Spatial Explorations," The Architect's Newspaper, April 30, 2008 Ken Johnson, "Peter Wegner: ‘Lever Labyrinth,’" The New York Times, September 2, 2005 Susan Cross, "Peter Wegner at Lever House," The New Yorker, August 8 & 15, 2005 Noah Chasin, "Reading Room," ArtReview, July 2005 Tanja Dückers, "To See in the Middle of Yellow," Die Tageszeitung, Berlin, Germany, March 31, 2005 (illus.) Andrea Scott, "Peter Wegner at Henry Urbach Architecture," The New Yorker, December 6, 2004 Matthew Guy Nichols, "Peter Wegner at The Bohen Foundation," Art in America, October 2004 Noah Chasin, "Peter Wegner at The Bohen Foundation," Time Out New York, May 26, 2004 Christopher Knight, "Mass, Volume and Air, by Wegner," Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2004 Kim Levin, "Peter Wegner at The Bohen Foundation," Village Voice, May 6, 2004 Martha Schwendener, "Peter Wegner at the Bohen Foundation," The New Yorker, April 19–26, 2004 Cathy Lang Ho, "Color-Coded," The Architect's Newspaper, April 6, 2004 Eve Meltzer, "Peter Wegner," Frieze, September 2002 (illus.) Charles Merewether, Sabine Fehlemann (eds.), Sammlung Rosenkranz, Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, Germany. Exhibition catalog. 2002

Personal life He currently lives and works in Berkeley, California.