Magnetic intersections - Reviews - "Cross Sections" photographic exhibition, San Jose Museum of Art

Afterimage, March, 2002 by Berin Golonu

Just how closely art can parallel or parody science is made abundantly clear in Catherine Wagner's latest photography project, titled "Cross Sections." The prints in this series resulted from a two-year Residency Fellowship the Bay-Area photographer received from the San Jose Museum of Art. Wagner spent the time continuing her long-standing inquiries into the realm of scientific research; visiting labs, utilizing their camera equipment and incorporating imagery recorded with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) or Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM) into her art. The resulting Iris prints in "Cross Sections," often microscopic in scope, offer a surprisingly intimate look at our natural world. Common specimens, such as green beans and onions, are presented in unfamiliar perspectives whereas a closer view of our own organs and tissues reveals a foreign-looking universe housed inside the human body. These images prompt viewers to contemplate the accuracy of empirical knowledge while simultaneously questioning the se emingly objective presentation of data offered by science and technology.

In previous projects such as the "American Classrooms" (1988) series and the "Art 8 Science" (1995) series, Wagner has shown an interest in revealing where science and culture intersect. Her work consistently builds the case that science alters society's outlook on the world while specifically being driven by social needs. Some of Wagner's earlier images have been included in "Cross Sections" in order to give context to the newer work, set the scene and show us where scientific discoveries take place. -86 Degree Freezer (12 Areas of Concern and Crisis) (1995) from the "Art & Science" series shows the contents of freezers filled with DNA specimens belonging to patients afflicted with hereditary diseases: Alzheimer's, bipolar disorder, breast cancer, alcoholism, among others. Frost coated jars labeled "tumor tissue," mouse serum" and "skin biopsies" are stacked in the freezer and used in research to help eliminate our genetic susceptibility to such diseases. The contents of these jars might very well be the sou rce from which the cells and tissues pictured in "Cross Sections" originated.

If Wagner strove toward a seemingly objective recording of scientific environments in her earlier work, her new imagery takes more creative liberties. These images don't propose an objective view of nature's minutia. Instead they elicit signs of having been carefully composed. The tools with which the subjects have been recorded play the first role in image construction. In the same way that a lens shapes what we see and alters the dimensions of our vision, the photos taken with MRI and SEM equipment affect the appearance of their subjects. Many of us have seen examples of MRI scans showing cross sections of the human brain neatly sliced from one end to another. This penetrating technology is often used to detect brain tumors and other abnormalities in our vital organs. Here Wagner has used it in an unorthodox manner to offer peculiar views of the insides of common fruits and vegetables. The results are wonderfully imaginative.

Upon first glance, Corn (1998), showing the circumference of a corncob, resembles an x-ray of deformed teeth, incisors circling all the way around, with the feeding hole situated in the middle. This looks more like the jaw of an exotic, ferocious animal than something served at a summer barbecue. Green Beans (2001) emit a similar sense of mystery. Stacked vertically in pairs; these sinewy pods look more like chromosomes appearing on a patient's chart than something found in a stirfry. By tracking glowing, flickering patterns of radio waves that respond to the magnetic push and pull of the camera, MRI imaging injects the ordinary with an otherworldly appearance. The photographer appears to be playing with our norms of perception. In much the same way that new scientific discoveries prompt us to reexamine our habitual understandings of the natural world, these images encourage us to see the familiar in a new light.

Wagner further distances us from the familiar by altering her compositions through digital manipulation. An image such as Green Onion (1998) is made from copying a sliced cross section of this vegetable--which resembles a scarab in this instance--over and over again in repeating patterns that evoke a tapestry or decorative paper. The artist claims that these repetitive patterns echo the painstaking routines of scientists in a lab; identical experiments are performed over and over again in order to verify the accuracy of their results. But the obviously crafted appearance of images such as Green Onion are also suggestive of the ends arrived at by such scientific research: genetically engineered super-foods that grow twice as large in half the time compared to organic produce, or disease-resistant crops guaranteed to produce a healthy harvest--science has indeed allowed humankind to cultivate the world's natural resources for its accelerated consumption.