The most important part of making art for me is to pursue a mystery that can’t be solved: to fixate on the most important questions that get raised but have no simple answers, to be caught in the web spun by the relationship between sensory input and potential meaning. This, to me, is the only real reason to get out of bed in the morning.
— Ian Pedigo, 2025
For his new show, Ian Pedigo adopts the title ‘Mystagogue’, a word from the Greek μυστα, meaning “initiate” and γωγός, meaning “to lead”. Historically the term referred to a person who led initiates in ancient mystery rites. These mysteries were sacred rituals aimed at revealing a deeper understanding of the universe and existence. For Pedigo, mystagogue points to the agency which leads us to the mysteries of existence and keeps us suspended in the act of uncovering—or recovering—meaning.
Pedigo has created five enigmatic wall works. Juxtaposed within each piece are recognizable botanical forms that are abstracted and complicated by their material surroundings. He employs plaster finishes that might cover ancient walls or chip off modern ones. These surfaces are embedded with plant-like shapes, recalling bas relief or stone carving, pictograms that people have used throughout time to make sense of the world they live in. Pedigo views this interplay as a metaphor for how humans absorb elements from their surroundings, how these become nourished imaginatively, and in turn transformed into products for everyday life. In doing so, we become entwined within the cyclical fabric of the world itself—a world that, in its perpetual state of unresolved mystery, compels us to seek understanding and meaning. That meaning may remain elusive and ever suspended in unknowing, yet it is the mystery itself that becomes a catalyst for our propulsion into life.
Ian Pedigo (b. 1973 in Anchorage, Alaska) received an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin. He has shown his work at Franklin Parrasch Gallery, Peter Blum, Tibor de Nagy, and Kristen Lorello in New York City; The Katzen Art Center, Washington, DC; NY; Super Dakota, Brussels, Belgium; Inman Gallery, Houston, TX; Galleri Roto, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; SAAG, Alberta, Canada; His work has been written about in Art in America, The New Yorker, Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Chicago Tribune, Frieze Magazine, Art Review, The New York Times, ArtNews, Sculpture Magazine, and Hyperallergic. Pedigo is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Grant. His work is held in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
