PROJECTIONS – a new body of work by artist Harrison Tenzer – is now on view at The Empty Circle in Gowanus through February 3rd.
Emerging from the Pandemic pits of psychological survival, queer artist Harrison Tenzer turned to drawing as a defense against loneliness and anxiety, finding a new creative vision ready to bloom, which evolved over the following years to his new body of work featuring etchings and alcohol ink on plexiglass. The emerging artist situates the birth of his latest body of work in dialogue with Freudian psychoanalysis (hence the show title “Projections”), traditional ink blots via Victor Hugo’s 19th century proto- abstract drawings and the clinical Rorschach test. Shedding light on where early modern psychology dovetails with modern art, Harrison’s multilayered automatist drawings on plexi invoke powerful visions ripe for enlightened introspection. Lifeboat to the pandemic’s isolation and emotional fallout, the artist’s digital drawings are transferred to plexiglass. Newly coronated as etchings, they are full of skeletal formations and other anthropomorphic glories – taking on a life of their own as snake-like and vegetal meanderings.
Interested at once in the psyche’s spiritual, psychic and psychological terrain, Tenzer refers to his drawings alternatively as “energy lines,” what might mimic movements of an EKG machine or Seismographs. I also read wind blowing through a raincloud, skid marks on asphalt, spirals and the serpentine flow of anything that is well, alive…
Year of the Dragon fast-approaching, Harrison’s marks sway with the light, invoking winding ravines and flowing rivers of energy. Reverence for similar shapes in ancient cultures the world over sufficiently corresponds with modern scientific truths revealing how mountain ranges, coastlines, rivers and anything that flows along (including the rivers of air within each hemisphere stabilizing our climate) swirl and swivel in this manner. Interested in happy accidents and drawing as meditation, each work goes through many stages before reaching its final frame-ready state. Much like the trancelike space from which Tenzer produces his drawings, the colored, stained backing boards of each piece are fabricated through a process of old-school experimentation which allows the alcohol ink to drip, drop, expand and dry on its own – leaving the formal basis of each composition up to happenstance. Harrison’s creative diagnostic connects his use of alcohol ink to hand sanitizer’s rise to ubiquity and the plexiglass layers themselves to the influx of screens, shields, masks and yes, escalated surveillance capitalism which has inundated our human experience since 2020.
While the show title “Projections” does bare much weight being linked to Freudian Father-logic and philosophy, notably, Plato’s cave and the notion that most of us go through life mistaking shadows for reality; Tenzer, a queer artist, aims for a more open- ended and multivocal viewer experience. While quarantined, the artist fashioned these works as a means of transmuting his own uncomfortable emotions, and yet, as a gift to the world they are anchored in something less distinct. Amidst an increasingly divisive, alienated and icy social landscape, Tenzer hopes that his new body of work encourages on-lookers to become more aware of how they perceive the world and their own decision-making powers.
Veritable Rorschach blots for change, the multi-hued series offers a sense of expansion and dimensionality. Moving around the space, you simply can’t look at any work the same twice. In the space between layers one might witness an exquisitely subtle dance of light and shadow. None too flashy or grandiose, each work offers multiple dynamic entry points to behold. They are meant to communicate polyvalence and “cyphers of meaning,” rather than any linear understanding of culture or history. Tenzer explains how ultimately, the goal of this work is about moving out of rigid biases and challenging deceptive facades. While this may not be the world’s most political show, the artist intends that this latest body of work help us collectively move toward the intricately diverse, non-violent, tolerant species we are now tasked at evolving to become.
PROJECTIONS at The Empty Circle Debut solo exhibition of Harrison Tenzer JANUARY 10 – FEBRUARY 3RD, 2024 499 3rd Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215, open Friday – Sunday, 12-5 and by appointment
About the Artist
Harrison Tenzer (b. 1989) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn. His work was most recently featured in the virtual exhibition at Hook Art Interviews on, for and about the queer body, curated by Eric Shiner, Executive Director of Pioneer Works and Rapture: A Queer Taste for Color, Texture and Decorative Pattern at Equity Gallery, New York.
Follow the Artist on Instagram @htenzer
Follow The Empty Circle Gallery on Instagram @theemptycircle