Modern West is pleased to share American Mythology, a solo exhibition of recent work by Salt Lake City-based artist Jerrin Wagstaff. Select paintings and collages will be on view in Modern West’s main gallery January 16 through March 7, 2025.

Each piece in American Mythology originates from the artist’s research on 19th century Romantic painters and their extravagant depictions of the unexplored American West. As Wagstaff describes, “the conquest of this landscape reinforced ideas about American exceptionalism, rugged individualism and the belief that nature was not only God’s creation but also something to be conquered and exploited as a resource.”

Wagstaff has spent the last several years compositing grand focal moments from the landscapes of Albert Bierstadt and other renowned Romantic painters. Through both painting and collage, this act of deconstructing, manipulating and reassembling became a metaphor for the way that American mythologies are being questioned, examined and reconstructed today. 

“Where Bierstadt presented his composites as truth, Wagstaff seeks to reveal that our ‘truth’ is a constructed one…” writes art critic Shana Nys Dambrot. “This is not only a fantastic trick of technical prowess as a painter, but it’s a saliently embodied meditation on the value of engaging with the art historical continuum and the concept of holding multiple truths simultaneously.”

Download a digital catalog of Jerrin’s work here.