Andrew Wagner „Hypnotist”, 2020, Charcoal on paper, 70 x 50 cm, Unique, 800 €
In Andrew Wagner’s work, historical and pop-cultural visual worlds intertwine into fragile, often humorously fractured narratives about desire, subjectivity, and political imagination. The work “Hypnotist” (2020) is based on Fritz Lang’s silent film “Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler” (1922), in which the criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse seeks power through hypnosis. In Wagner’s cartoonish depiction of this figure, his interests are exemplified: his drawings show figures moving through scenes that are simultaneously exaggerated and real. The cartoon aesthetic serves as a tool to reveal the emotional and political tensions that arise between individual experience and collective longing.
Andrew Wagner (*New Jersey, USA) works with film, drawing, sculpture, and text. His protagonists often appear as fragmented, assembled bodies, figures that strain under the pressures of a heightened contemporary reality. He studied at Städelschule with Judith Hopf and lives in Berlin, where he currently studies North American Studies at Freie Universität. His work has been exhibited at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main; FUTURA, Prague; NoPop, New Haven and MIXNYC, Brooklyn, among others.