Photographing within institutions of learning, like classrooms, museums, and scientific laboratories, Catherine Wagner (born 1953, San Francisco) profiles the architectures of civilization—the systems through which we generate and transmit knowledge. With analytical clarity and profound beauty, her visual investigation of science captures its tools and subjects, and the awe they inspire. Working behind closed doors of distinguished laboratories, Wagner borrows the mechanisms and methods of scientific research, using devices like the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine as she would her camera. In the hands of an artist, scientific technologies and the images—or data—they record aren’t pure or antiseptic. Instead, they read like portraits, revealing fundamental humanity within seemingly empirical attempts to understand the nature of our being.

This exhibition presents Wagner’s monumental installation Pomegranate Wall (2000). Made following a two-year Artist Residency Fellowship at SJMA, Pomegranate Wall is the culmination of her investigations into objects of scientific inquiry in the research and technology-rich Silicon Valley. Imaged in reverse of a camera—from the inside out, rather than the outside in—MRI scans of pomegranates resemble human cells under a microscope. Their continuously repeated pattern evokes the organic process of cellular replication. But here, repetition is achieved through technology rather than biology, raising important questions around how technology can alter human life. As a result, the glowing arc of MRI images in Pomegranate Wall transforms the clinical space of a laboratory into a full, human-scaled theater—an operatic space that embodies Wagner’s reflections on science and culture.

The crisp precision and formal structure of Wagner’s photographs are characteristic of the scientific process. Just as a Petri dish isolates its contents for study and a microscope frames a researcher’s view, Wagner’s compositions contain and classify visual information. Obsolete three-dimensional molecular models show historic attempts to visualize our biological makeup. In Wagner’s photographs, the linear sequence and encasement of the models within glass vitrines abstract them from their technical meaning. Her images of ultra-high vacuum chambers used in state-of-the-art physics research appear anthropomorphic. Titled Frankenstein, these works suggest that scientific tools—and how they are put to use—shape a society, informing our knowledge and ethics. As new technologies open up possibilities for deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us, Wagner’s photographs look critically at how scientific knowledge is created, examining the systems through which we decipher the codes and structures of human existence.

Catherine Wagner: Paradox Observed is organized by Kathryn Wade, curatorial associate.

All works by Catherine Wagner.

Sponsored by Casey and Jack Carsten and Tad Freese and Brook Hartzell. In-kind support provided by Anglim Gilbert Gallery and Gallery Luisotti.