Options 7:

Jane Wenger – An Environmental Installation

January 31-March 22, 1981

The seventh exhibition in the MCA’s “Options” series is an environmental installation by Chicago photographer Jane Wenger. For this project, her first installation work, Wenger has combined cropped, close-range photos of the human face, enlarged to mural size, with taped recordings. The effect is a merging of sounds and images into a provocative environment. The work, installed in a room specially designed by Wenger in the Museum’s lower gallery, is on view through March 22nd.

Educated at the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois, Jane Wenger is known for her striking black and white nude studies. In the past she has worked with wide-angle hand-held cameras, photographing her figures either from a distance as part of the landscape or at close range transforming them into mysterious topographical surfaces. The photos used in this installation expand on the ideas Wenger has explored in these earlier works and are enhanced by the environmental dimension.

Options 7 was organized by MCA Curator Mary Jane Jacob and is supported in part with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Jane Wenger, Untitled (1980), photograph. Jane Wenger: An Environmental Installation Abrasively conceived, elegantly printed, and disconcerting to the viewer, Jane Wenger’s photographs expose the human figure. Within the seemingly narrow range of her series-“Extended Arms” (1974-76), “Self-Portraits” (1976), “Bald Heads” (1977), and “Faces” (1978-79)-she has surprisingly built a significant oeuvre. The products of a long series of darkroom alterations, her photographs are carefully and extensively edited, severely cropped, and masterfully printed. It is in this development process as well as in the shooting that Wenger achieves her enigmatic forms.

In 1972, beginning with her first photographs of the figure in an outdoor setting, Wenger began both to establish her visual vocabulary and stake out the subject that she has continued to use ever since. Not unlike Edward Weston’s studies of female nudes in the desert or Bill Brandt’s female nudes in the landscape or rooms, these works are evidence of Wenger’s early interest in emphasizing certain abstract forms within a composition. Unlike her forerunners, however, Wenger’s nudes comment less on the abstract beauty of the human figure; instead they concentrate on the ambiguity of form. Her detachment from the subject as real person is further indicated by her consistent omission of the figure’s face. The ambiguity is heightened through several other means. First, Wenger has eliminated any references to scale, as in her series of self-portraits against the sky (1976) which recall Rene Magritte’s surreal juxtapositions. Second, by freely and often radically cropping the print-a technique that has become increasingly essential to Wenger’s work-she has been able to create totally new compositions. Also, influenced here by the cropped views of Bill Brandt (particularly his portraits of artists in which he shows only the eye), she frequently has centered on a detail or part of the body. And last, by utilizing both existing and stroboscopic light, Wenger has achieved unnatural combinations of intensely dark and light areas in a single picture. Such techniques give to her work its surreal quality and formal tension.

This exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art is based on the images produced for the “Faces” series. In contrast to earlier work in which Wenger carefully concealed the face, these harsh photographs deal directly and solely with that part of the body. Whereas previously Wenger showed views of the figure in a landscape, here the figure, or more specifically the face, is itself the landscape; each pore becomes a part of this topography. This direction first became evident in the “Extended Arms” series and was developed further in the exceptional “Bald Heads” which show the head against the sky; the varied, textural surface of the head appears.like a mound of earth on the horizon. In “Faces,” with a now total denial of any sense of scale or perspective, Wenger allows the facial features to fill the composition. In confronting these hyper-realistic views, the result is always disturbing, sometimes grotesque. The MCA exhibition is Jane Wenger’s first environmental installation. The installation itself becomes a single work of art-a concept rarely explored by photographers. “Faces” were originally exhibited in a conventional format in a gallery setting. Here Wenger has selected only ten views and increased their scale to approximately 4 x 4 feet to 4 x 6 feet. The images are radically transformed by the addition of a sound track made during one of the shooting sessions. Like the photographs, the sound was edited, rearranged, and altered by varying the speeds. By darkening the room, black walls merge with black ceiling and floor, and the entire space has been made profoundly disorienting. From total darkness the individually lit, powerful, and aggressive images project toward us. The sounds set the atmosphere as we strain to distinguish their origin. Images are interrelated by the height and interval of their placement, by their featured body part, or by their mood, which ranges from distorted physical straining to thoughtful calm.

This installation marks a dramatic change in Wenger’s work. In part it was inspired by the circumstances in which “Faces” were made. Instead of her customary approach-selecting the scene for a chosen model-Wenger placed herself in an already existing situation: a gym in which body builders were working out. Their activity was so physically overwhelming, their power of concentration so intense, that Wenger remained the outside and unnoticed observer. The intensity and privacy of that situation is reflected in the MCA installation. First, by creating in the Museum a room which serves as a total, almost oppressive environment, Wenger forces us to focus on the images and sounds. The self-absorbed nature of the body builders’. Actions is felt as we confront their oversized faces. Although their exertion is a function of their whole bodies, Wenger chooses to show only their faces-the part that most reflects what they are experiencing physically and emotionally-and in these close-up views she powerfully exposes her subjects. Ironically, these men seem more naked than Wenger’s nude figures.

From the most specific and real setting in which Wenger has ever worked, she has created her most mysterious work. No background exists in any of the photographs to give us a clue; the black room creates a disorienting space; and the sound only increases our questions about what these figures were doing. Yet here Wenger takes us far beyond a specific experience: she speaks of a multitude of situations and, using ambiguity to its most fruitful ends, allows us our own interpretations as we pause in the environment she has created.

Mary Jane Jacob Curator We would like to thank Lynne Warren, Mark Pierce, Dennis Evans, Dennis O’Shea, and Ted Stanuga of the Museum Staff for their assistance with this installation. We are also grateful to Jason Swackhamer for the expert care he gave to lighting the exhibition and to K & S Photographies for printing the photographic enlargements. Special thanks are due to Hans Schaal who recorded the original sound as conceived and directed by Jane Wenger, and to Michael Lembke who worked with the artist on the production of the sound for this installation. The Museum of Contemporary Art wishes also to acknowledge that Options is supported in part with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Design: Michael Glass Photos: Tom Van Eynde

Biography
1944 Born in New York
Lives in Chicago

Education
1966 State University of New York, College of Ceramics at Alfred University,
Alfred, New York (Scandinavian Seminar in Denmark, 1964-65}, B.F.A.
1969 Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, completed
course work for M.S.
1980 School of Art and Design, University of Illinois, Circle Campus,
Chicago, M.F.A.

Grants and Awards
1979,80 Illinois Arts Council, Project Completion Grant
1979-80 University of Illinois, Graduate Fellowship

One-Person Exhibitions
1976 Artemisia Gallery, Chicago
1978,80 Foto Gallery, New York
1980 Allan Frumkin Gallery/Photographs Inc. (at Landfall Press Gallery),
Chicago

Selected Group Exhibitions
1968 Kovler Gallery, Chicago, “Image 68”
University of Iowa, Iowa City, “Refocus”
1974 Juniper Tree, Spokane, Washington, “Henry Lyman/ Jane Wenger”
1976 Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, “Self-Portraits”
1977 Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, “Artemisia Photo Gallery
Members at Bard College”
John Hancock Center, Chicago, “Artemisia in the Hancock”
Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, “Jane Wenger/Harold Allen”
(artists’ statement)
Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, “Focus on Chicago”
lntuitiveye Gallery, Washington, D.C., “Jane Wenger/Carole Harmel”
(artists’ statement)
1978 Chicago Cultural Center, “New Horizons in Art”
Hayes Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “Four Points of View”
Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, “Midwest Photographers”
Marcuse Pfeifer Gallery, New York, “The Male Nude”
Milwaukee Art Center, Wisconsin, “American Photographs from the
Permanent Collection”
N.A.M.E. Gallery, Chicago, “False Face”
Rizzoli Bookstore, Chicago, “Thirteen Photographers”
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, “Chicago: The City
and Its Artists 1945-1978″ (exh. cat.)
1979 Aspen Center for the Visual Arts, Colorado, “American Portraits of the
’60s and ’70s” (exh. cat.)
Catskill Center for Photography, Woodstock, New York, “Contemporary
Expression in Photography”
Galeria PL900 Casa aboy, Miramir, Puerto Rico, “Foto Uno”
Illinois Arts Council, Chicago, “Salute to Artsweek”
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, “Intentions and Techniques,
Photographs from the Lehigh University Collection” (exh. cat.)
Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, “The University Collects”
1981 Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences, Peoria, Illinois, “Personnages”

Public Collections
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

Selected References:
Edward M. Uzemack, “Self Portraits,” Midwest Art 4, 5 (October 1976): 14. Gretchen Garner, “Self Portraits,” The New Art Examiner 4, 2 (November 1976):21. Sandra Hytken, “Measuring the Medium of Photography,” The Reader, Chicago, November 19, 1976.
Gretchen Garner, “From museums to galleries, everybody’s doing it,” Afterimage 4, 6 (December 1976): 13-14.
Lynne Warren, “Artemisia,” Midwest Art 3, 8 (December 1976): 21-22. Lincoln F. Johnson, “Nude bodies arranged in unusual context,” The Sun, Washington, D.C., May 12, 1977.
David Tannous, “Would a Rat be Sur-or-Superreal? /Carole Harmel and
Jane Wenger at lntuitiveye Gallery,” Washington Star, May 15, 1977:
Jo Ann Lewis, “Galleries,” The Washington Post, May 24, 1977.
William Braden, “Show stripped of nude photos,” Sun-Times, Chicago,
June 4, 1977.
“An Original Artist,” The Washington Art Market Letter 1, 4 (June 1977): 6. Gretchen Garner, “The Photo Co-op After a Year,” The New Art Examiner 4, 9 (June 1977): 11-12.
Carole Harmel, “Harold Allen, Jane Wenger,” The New Art Examiner
5, 3 (December 1977): 18.
Fred McDarrah, “Jane Wenger,” The Village Voice, March 13, 1978.
Alan G. Artner, “German Photo Exhibit a Must-See/’False Face,'”
Chicago Tribune, August 4, 1978.
Barbara Aubin, “False Face, A Mask Exhibition at N.A.M.E. Gallery,
Chicago, Ill.,” Visual Dialog 4, 1 (Fall 1978): 21.
Yale Joel, Creative Camera Techniques: Set 19, The Nude, New York:
Random House, 1979: no. 7.
Carole Harmel, “Jane Wenger: The dialectics of sexuality,” The New Art
Examiner 6, 10 (Summer 1979): 7, 11; reprinted in Afterimage 7, 5
(December 1979): 12-13.
Roger Rapp, “Uber das Gestique in der Fotografie,” Woodstock Times,
November 8, 1979.
Lawrence Barns, ed. The Male Nude in Photography, Waitsfield,
Vermont: Vermont Crossroads Press, 1980.
Candida Finkel, “Jane Wenger,” The New Art Examiner 7, 8 (May
1980): 20.
Fred McDarrah, “Jane Wenger,” The Village Voice, October 1, 1980.
John Alderson, “Wenger’s Photos Compel, Repel,” Sun-Times, Chicago,
April 4, 1980.
David Elliott, “A linguist with a camera, Plowden’s irony is polite/ Jane
Wenger’s New Work,” Sun-Times, Chicago, April 13, 1980.
Alan G. Artner, “On the face of it, photo exhibit signifies little,” Chicago
Tribune, January 30, 1981.
Kevin Johnson, “Jane Wenger faces reality,” The Reader, Chicago,
January 30, 1981.