The Science Club: The Boy's Room, Now, Forever, Then, part 1

Erika Wanenmacher, a New Mexico based multi-media sculptor, reveals a provocative exhibition entitled “The Science Club: The Boy’s Room, Now, Forever, Then, part 1.” A Santa Fe resident, Wanenmacher has long been intrigued by the atomic history of the American West, particularly the nuclear saga of neighboring Los Alamos laboratories.

Rapt by a mixture of fascination and horror, Wanenmacher reacts to the appalling history of “human radiation experiments” executed by scientists in Los Alamos between the forties through nineteen seventies, the most shocking of which involve government doctors dosing their own children with radio-isotopic iodine.

In this elaborate installation, which took nearly ten years to compile, Wanenmacher explores how nature, culture, science and technology merge in America’s atomic legacy. These themes intersect as Wanenmacher juxtaposes a child’s bedroom—decked with sixties-era furniture, toys, comic books, magazines, and subversive paint-by-number bomb décor—with an office arrangement consisting of period equipment, fallout distribution maps, and field apparatus appropriated from government surplus facilities. A seemingly haunted atmosphere is fashioned as this invented domestic space is coupled with authentic artifacts from the offices and laboratories of Los Alamos.

Surreptitious details embellish the nostalgic components of the bedroom; delicately quilted atomic figures adorn the bedspread, an X-ray of damaged bone becomes a lampshade, and a comic of Atomic Superboy suggest how deeply embedded atomic culture is to our experience and condition. The fully black and white exhibition is interrupted by one moment of color, a tiny glass of fluorescent yellow-green liquid sitting on a T.V. stand before a monitor running a classic cartoon short.

Wanenmacher seeks to both expose this dark history and pay homage to the victims of these crimes and experiments, reminding us of the possibilities and perils that stem from technology’s pursuit of progress. Yet, the piece is also a spell cast for the future, to bring light from the dark and contemplate our own standing at this critical moment in history. If we “bring to public consciousness” the consequences of the past, we can “change consciousness at will,” Wanenmacher suggests.

Erika Wanenmacher has been widely exhibited throughout the US. Her two most recent one-person exhibitions were featured in New York at the Claire Oliver Gallery and in New Mexico at Linda Durham Contemporary Art. Another notable exhibition, "Grimoire" was featured at SITE Santa Fe in 2001, curated by Louis Grachos. A 20-year survey of Wanemacher works was shown at the Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe in 1996. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, Museum of Albuquerque and the Fisher Landau Center, New York.