Shifting Ground, An Exhibition of Works by Mirabel Wigon @ The Loft

Michael Stearns Studio presents Shifting Ground, an exhibition of landscape paintings by Mirabel Wigon. 

These paintings are inspired by Wigon’s immediate surroundings and address the abject setting of the aging industrial landscape, the growing expanse of the American urban-scape and resulting environmental issues.

Michael Stearns said initially, in a conversation he had with Marie Thibeault, Professor Emerita of Art at CSULB, the idea to have this exhibition took hold before the pandemic and before everything subsequently shut down. Fast forward nearly two years, as things are beginning to reopen, Stearns and Thibault revived their plans, this time specifically to show Wigon’s works.

“She is a gifted young artist,” Stearns said. “She recently graduated and went on to become Assistant Professor of Art at California State University, Stanislaus which is very unusual.”

Stearns said her paintings are colorful, very large and exciting. 

“They are very much a part of San Pedro with the industrial complex and nature,” Stearns said.  “The internal and external energy that moves back and forth combines nicely in her compositions with lots of texture. You get swallowed by them.”

Mirabel Wigon’s large-scale landscape paintings depict a vast and complex technological sublime. 

Wigon writes, “The landscape is a stage for the drama of human activity. Painting is a container, a conglomeration of material signs that act as iconographic representations of a particular historic moment. Through these paintings, I explore my place, and space, questioning modernist notions of progress and reflecting on the inherent instability in the built and natural Landscape.”

The paintings depict an imagined and constructed landscape, which is fractured and unstable.

Wigon states, “The urban system is in a state of continuous change, altering the way we move through – and understand – our physical location and socioeconomic status in relation to the environment. I am particularly focused on the energy infrastructure that fuels this continual growth and change in the LA area. These energy structures are the epitome of modernist notions of success, advancement, and progress. This body of work depicts the dichotomy between this notion of progress and the environmental crisis.”

Upon close inspection, the paintings’ visual elements are repeated, fragmented, and coalesce through various painting strata. The resulting image creates a condition in which the viewer cannot pinpoint which layer came first. 

Mirabel Wigon’s works have been featured in numerous group exhibitions both regional and national. Her recent work has been exhibited in (Per)Mutations at the Gatov Gallery in Long Beach, Insights at the Kleefeld Contemporary in Long Beach. ALPAY: Now Trending at the Palos Verdes Art Center in Palos Verdes, Made in California at Brea Gallery in Brea and Painted 2021: 5th Biennial Survey at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH. Wigon is Assistant Professor of Art at California State University, Stanislaus where she teaches drawing and painting.

The exhibition will have a soft opening on March 3, during San Pedro First Thursday Artwalk. Shifting Ground will be on view from March 5 to April 15. The gallery is open by appointment only. The artist talk will also be broadcasted via Instagram Live on the artist’s Instagram handle @mirabelwigon.

Time: Artist’s talk, 1 p.m. and reception from 2 to 5 pm. March 5. 

Details: 562-400-0544; www.michaelstearnsstudio.com

Venue: Michael Stearns Studio @ The Loft, 401 S. Mesa St., San Pedro.