The Scapegoat and the Bear

A clear image can be the quickest path into the uncanny, the implausible, and the magically ordinary. Even the simplest image can point toward the inner churning of mind and emotion that can't be uprooted or explained away with words. "The Scapegoat and the Bear" brings together over fifty works of painting, printmaking, and drawing in this solo exhibition by Troy artist Jeff Wigman. This enigmatic romp is filled with impossible animals, symbolist landscapes, and humorous disasters, all drawing from the treasury of images handed down through the ages. The paintings take familiar forms and turn them every which way, finding unexpected angles of reflection on a shifting world. Curated by Mark Dion, whose own work takes the world's accumulated knowledge as raw material to reveal the porousness of our thought systems, this is the largest presentation of Wigman’s work to date.

Grounded in traditional painting methods but shaped by a contemporary understanding of images and media, the work treats historical techniques as living technologies rather than mere nostalgia. Sense is made from fragments built on fragments. Layers of paint look solid and thin at the same time, and what appear to be clear images are often just wisps completed within the mind's eye. Navigating the world this way leads to a borderland where forms disappear if examined too long, where material stops and mind takes over.

From this loose gauze of mind and vision, a whole spectrum of experience takes shape. Aspects of the grotesque, allegorical language, satire, and a deep, ardent, appreciation for the history of art and philosophy are encoded throughout the exhibition. Shifts in scale and flipped hierarchies poke at the edges of reasonability. History gets wrung out and twisted like a dish towel. The more recognizable a scene, the more questions it opens. Can an animal do that? How am I supposed to feel about this? Is this funny or sad? Why am I left tenderhearted? Does the solid ground I'm standing on even have anything underneath it?

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalog and interview.