Westport Arts Center Features an Unconventional Traveler: William Wegman

“William Wegman: The Traveler,” an exhibition in the Westport Arts Center Gallery at 51 Riverside Avenue, will feature a mix of postcard paintings, drawings, Polaroids, and video, illustrating Wegman’s career-long incorporation of found images.

Works date from the mid-1980s to new paintings on view for the first time.  Vintage cards expand into skillful and whimsically painted landscapes, cityscapes, and abstract atmospheres of investigative play.

An opening reception for the exhibition will be held on Friday, January 25, 6:30 - 8pm. Free and open to the public, this event will feature William Wegman signing copies of his books, along with food and beverages. 

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In response to the exhibition, Westport Arts Center Director of Visual Arts and exhibition curator, Helen Klisser During, states: “I’ve admired William Wegman’s work for years — it is witty, humorous, skillful, and endearing. I thought the Westport Arts Center would be a marvelous platform to exhibit Wegman’s postcard paintings. In these paintings he skillfully and playfully engages his audience on a virtual traveling adventure of his mind. Now we can travel with him.”

Weaving, merging, and almost camouflaging the found cards, Wegman creates distinctive environments where countries and cultures collide. At times, Wegman reinforces the postcard’s narrative within his painted composition. At other times, he transforms the feeling of the pictured scene by creating a believable yet imagined world that exists beyond the edges.