Repercussions, Mark Van Wagner’s first solo exhibition at Gallery North, presents the artist’s Sandbox sculptures and paintings. Wagner investigates inner and outer topographies through aggregates of materials including natural sand collected from various locations around the world, pigmented sand, debris, polymer glues and carboard boxes. These common materials provide ideal components to explore time, location and substance. Each of Wagner’s works simultaneously references archeology, geology and sociology while merging natural and man-made cycles of accretion and erosion, formation and destruction. Viewers witness the consequences of impact events and the reverberation of forces. The implications of conflict and ruin are present but juxtaposed against suggestions of humor and restoration, which reaffirms the cyclical nature of life and invites the viewer to contemplate impermanence.  

Mark Van Wagner is a Long Island based sculptor and painter. He has exhibited regionally and internationally including a solo exhibition in Vienna, Austria and inclusion in the Hecksher Museum’s Long Island Biennial. Wagner is a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This exhibition is generously sponsored by the Field Family, Jefferson’s Ferry, Pet ER 24/7, Printers 3 and Suffolk County’s Department of Economic Development and Planning. The exhibition, reception, and ArTalk will be free and open to the public.