How easy it is to initially, and from a distance, mistake Jeremy Wagner's work for representational realism. But there is something in the alternating glow and flatness of his work that draws us in, and that confuses our brains until ultimately seeing abstraction amidst the realism: pure geometric forms, fields of color. The viewer is drawn close enough eventually to be able to admire Wagner's use of the roughest of materials to create his jewel box-like surfaces. Rust is interspersed with layers of opaque color, and patches of the raw steel canvas are left revealed. Gritty urban settings, along with slap-in-the-face, agit-prop political messages and tongue-in-cheek art historical references, all reveal Wagner's wit, wisdom and personal journey as an artist and individual. His skill with his tools and his ability to affect our perception is also revealed upon close inspection. Which of the fields of color are really just absence of color, the steel or rust showing through? He makes a white rectangular patch into a luminescent billboard. Two dimensions become three, again, from a distance. New Yorkers know his scenes. Isn't that the street in Brooklyn where …..? And isn’t that the sign on the bank at the corner of ….? Wagner depicts the grit that surrounds the populace of New York in some of his work and the rusted waste of post-industrial American society in other works, but he also depicts cheerful greenhouses full of botanical life and has also explored  detailed images of the technological massings of wires, switches, computer boards and various pieces of equipment that speak of contemporary life. Eye-hand coordination is innate to Wagner. He is a technically masterful painter, but it is his chosen imagery, his unique play with materials and his knowledge of, and teasing references to, art history that makes his work truly contemporary and pertinent.   He received his MFA from Hunter College in New York and has shown extensively in galleries there and elsewhere.  His work is now at home in a number of prominent collections, both private and corporate.  Jeremy lives and works in Brooklyn. www.JeremyWagner.com