Untitled A, Untitled B, Untitled C, Untitled D

This is a multi-part work by Post-minimalist artist Merrill Wagner that consists of oil pastel and a cloth tape known as Permacell applied to four Plexiglas panels. The individual panels are all, in a sense, imperfect handmade copies of one another that emphasize, like all of Wagner’s art, labor and process. Deciphering the way the works were made is key to understanding their meaning.

Occupying the second spot in the row of four is a panel that functions as the "master." The master is transferred—or, rather, its color and texture are transferred—three different times to three different sheets of Plexiglas by way of an unusual, painstaking process. First, Wagner applied a layer of oil pastel to the existing surface of the master, with a different color chosen each time. She then placed strips of cloth tape over the master, collecting trace evidence from its surface. Afterwards, she removed the strips and stuck them in more or less the same order as they appeared on the master to the back of another sheet of Plexiglas. What color and texture appears on the first, third, and fourth panels, therefore, is all transfer. The master is invariably changed in the process: remnants of each new layer of oil pastel remains, as does bits of adhesive and imprints from the tape. As a result, Untitled A, Untitled B, Untitled C, Untitled D represents and records the method of its own making, a method that establishes a kind of feedback loop between one panel and the next.