Multi-disciplinary artist Crystal Wagner creates deceptively natural-looking environments with paper and other materials purchased from dollar stores and office supply chains. Whether working on drawings, installations or printmaking, Wagner begins all of her work with an organic mark, allowing shapes to emerge and multiply like moss or fungus from another planet. Wagner recently created an installation titled “Urban Kudzu,” which is on view at the Zuckerman Museum of Art in Georgia and is currently setting up “Urban Kudzu II” in New York art space HERE for the three-person exhibition “The Color Wheel” opening May 10, which also features Christopher Smith and Jung S. Kim. She will also be featured in Spoke Art‘s booth at the upcoming ArtMRKT fair in San Francisco May 16 – 19.
“My latest installation titled Urban Kudzu explores ideas related to people and their disconnection from the natural world… In my own experience with the world, I have a deep rooted understanding of what the plastic feels like, of what manmade materials and spaces feel like, and tend to perceive the natural world through a very exotic lens,” Wagner said. “With Urban Kudzu I wanted to explore colors that seemed more artificial or synthetic. Maybe fast forward 100 years, where plastic grows by itself?” Take a look at some of Wagner’s work below.
Urban Kudzu on view now at the Zuckerman Museum of Art in Georgia
Arboretum, 2013
Surface, 2012
Time lapse video of the creation of Surface
