Jagger retrospective at Elvehjem

A large retrospective, “The Art of Gillian Jagger,” will open at the Elvehjem Museum on Saturday, Nov. 23, and remain on view through Jan. 19.

Since the 1950s, sculptor Jagger has recreated nature’s themes of death and time, and its pattern, texture and visual rhythms. “My work has steadily attempted to evolve in this system of natural forces, a system that included death as a part of its cycle of life,” she says. Jagger is a professor at the Pratt Institute in New York.

The first museum-organized presentation of Jagger’s work will showcase several pieces and works on paper created from the 1990s to the present. A replica of a large dairy barn will display installations featuring animal parts stabilized by resin and preserved trees found near the artist’s home in upstate New York. The animal parts represent the artist’s protest against animal abuse. Large-scale works on paper depicting animals will also be shown.

Paige Court will house three installations, along with Jagger’s “Spiral,” a major sculpture that was installed last December. Mayer Gallery will hold Jagger’s drawings of horses’ heads and six three-dimensional pieces of found wood that look like horses’ heads and one that looks like a dog’s head. Gallery VI will exhibit Jagger’s 1997 “Matrice,” which features a deer carcass she found on the road near her studio. The carcass, stabilized by resin and suspended with dairy cow stanchions and metal rigging, all hanging above broken stones from a New York quarry that cover the floor.

Gallery VII will feature the installations “Rift” (1998); “Absence of Faith” (2001), a multipart case of the artist’s horse, who died in an accident on Jagger’s farm; and “White Doe and Twins.”

A public reception for the exhibition will be held Friday, Nov. 22, 6-8 p.m.

For more information see: http://www.lvm.wisc.edu.