Watershed Studioworks is excited to present Tessercats, an exhibition of new paintings by Erik Wenzel. The show’s title is a play on the word “tesseract,” another name for a four-dimensional cube. 

Wenzel first became interested in the subject of hyperspace (spatial dimensions beyond the three we inhabit) while researching the early modernist avant-garde. He learned well-known artists like Marcel Duchamp and the cubists were intensely interested in theoretical mathematics and non-euclidean geometry. Some artists like Gilett Burgess took a humorous approach, while the architect and designer Claude Bragdon ventured into the spiritual and theosophical realm the fourth dimension promised to represent. For Wenzel, all this became an enticing way to think through history, conceive of abstract space as a mental place, and explore.

The other component of the show’s title is, of course, cats. “I started drawing the cat because I need something to draw and I like cats,” the artist has stated. The cat is a prompt, but it has also become a character or an avatar. The cat is drawn and painted again and again — a symbol, fussed over and meditated on like a religious icon. The cat has evolved into something like a deity or a spiritual being. Here, four-dimensional thinking comes in handy: hovering between representation and pure abstraction, each cat manifestation is an individual. The cat is now cats. Are the cats mystical beings? “They express my emotions and subconscious feelings. And they are also a reason to paint.” 

Erik Wenzel’s solo exhibitions include: Just Like A Normal Person, Even More So, 65Grand, Chicago; Schönen Abend, Galerie im Alcatraz, Hallein, Austria; and If travel is searching & home what’s been found, WerkStadt Kulturverein, Berlin, Germany. Group exhibitions include: Doomscapes and the Digital Beyond, ARC Gallery, Chicago; Artists Run Chicago 2.0, The Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; the 12th Havana Biennial, Fabrica de Arte Cubano, Havana, Cuba; and The Keys to Her Place, VBKÖ, Vienna, Austria. 

He has been written about in publications including Artforum, Artnet, Chicago magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. Wenzel’s writing has appeared in Portable Gray (University of Chicago), Akademie X (Phaidon), and How to Write About Contemporary Art, by Gilda Williams (Thames & Hudson). He co-edited and contributed to Internal Necessity: a reader tracing the inner logics of the contemporary art field published by Sternberg Press. 

Wenzel has been a Fellow at the Newberry Library, the Sommerakademie at the Zentrum Paul Klee, and the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Art. He received his MA in Art History from the University of Illinois at Chicago, his MFA from the University of Chicago, and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.