Merrill Wagner’s remarkable tape paintings are as much head games as they are inquiries into precision and chance. Trying to puzzle them out is akin to reverse-engineering a ship in a bottle: even after you know the technique, you still can’t quite imagine what it took to pull it off.
The exhibition Merrill Wagner: Works from the 70’s at Zürcher Gallery is a follow-up of sorts to last year’s 1970’s: 9 Women and Abstraction at the same venue, which featured eight of Wagner’s tape pieces. In the current show, five are on display in the main gallery (a number of small ones are hanging in the back office), including one two-part and one four-part work. There are also several paintings using conventional materials, and a lone three-dimensional work, “Alizarin Crimson Corner Piece” (1974), an oil-on-canvas painting/sculpture inserted into a corner on the floor.