The Gallery’s Featured Artist: Laurence Wensel
Laurence Wensel works in photography as well as creating digital images. “Through my work,” he states, “I want to communicate ideas regarding marginalization. I would like the viewer to ponder on the concept of space, place, and non-place. In regards to my design elements, my artworks utilize a bold color palette in order to catch the eye of my audience.” His approach is “palimpsestuous’” which is achieved by the use various computer/iPad applications which allow for control of line, value, texture, and color. He describes his work as “surrealistic inhabiting a dreamlike quality that captures a moment in time” and shares an affinity with Pipilotti Rist in exploring spaces and places. He adds, “When using works with text, Barabara Kruger and Saul Bass inspire my style as I play with words to break rules and ask questions about the margins on a paper or a digital screen.” The medium he incorporates is algorithmic art or computer-generated art. The original images derive from photography and digital drawings. However, the final output is a choreography of various apps that allow him to reform the work. Recently, his visual art has been published in Carcosa Magazine (Summer 2021), Reunion (Fall 2020), and his painting in an online gallery All Together Now (Sp/n Gallery (Winter 2020).
Mexican Curios
El Autor
The piece that started this collection, El Autor is the product of Wensel’s mission to take Carlos’s picture. Since Carlos hates taking pictures, the two walked around the mercantile trying to find a good space. In the end, the experience inspired Wensel to play with color and saturation to make a statement on commodification and the effect overproduction has on art.
Santa Muerte
What happens when images are commodified for profit? Overproduced items get glossed over and become innocuous, so there needs to be something to stand out amongst the rest. That’s where this collection’s distinct cartoon features comes in. With bright colors and smooth surfaces, the pictures reflect an aesthetically commercialized form of sculpture’s metal framework. While more pleasing to the eye, the question remains: does it diminish the creator’s original intent?
Teatro Chicano
Algorithmic Art
When Cities Dream
The one question Wensel is continuously asked is, “How do you approach art?” His process usually starts with an unanswered question, and after grappling with the question, he aims not to find the answer but understand the journey to the answer. This piece was inspired by the idea that cities are alive – they grow and shrink, places disappear and take the people with them. The question he asks is how can he show this phenomenon using geometric shapes and lines? Can he find the connection between the philosophy and dreams?
Haunted
Wensel was inspired by a West End showing of Ghost Stories, a play written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman. The play follows three characters and the consequence of their individual choices. Each character is haunted, and Wensel set out to showcase the encapsulation of a haunting with his main objective to play with dimensions and use color to create depth within a 2D medium. How did he accomplish this? Here’s a hint: focus on the green moths.