Phil Wagner presents Don’t Look Down, a new exhibition occupying the engine bay, bunk room, and locker room at Rusha & Co.
Working with industrial remnants—pegboard, steel, panel—Wagner installs without illusion. The works are structural, repetitive, and precise. But where Obsolescence (NO Gallery, 2019) framed collapse as ritual, Don’t Look Down introduces weightlessness. Silkscreened imagery—sourced from personal photographs, internet debris, and popular media—floats across surfaces, interrupting the heaviness of the material. Play and illusion are leveraged not to soften the work, but to complicate its function.
Don’t Look Down invites multiple readings: avoidance, defiance, collapse, control. Wagner offers no fixed position—only what’s built, what’s left, and what’s possible.
