Hank Ehrenfried & Marty Williams

North Loop West is thrilled to present Eyes, Mouth, Wings: a two-person show of work by artists Hank Ehrenfried and Marty Williams. Ehrenfried’s new body of oil paintings play with trompe l’eoil in their depiction of the artist’s personal archives, and Williams’s recent collages and assemblages comprise layered photographs printed on transparent film and found materials. Both artists play with the transmutation of source material and the inclusion—and obfuscation—of the figure as they explore ideas surrounding personal identity and history.

Ehrenfried paints collections of papers he’s accrued since childhood. He pins his methodically catalogued personal archives of photographs, old art auction catalogs, pages from gay erotica magazines, manga, and childhood artworks to the walls of his studio and paints these collaged compositions from close observation. The artist cuts, folds, and layers specific imagery to transform figures and information held within the source material and map new spatial and conceptual relationships. Ehrenfried’s manipulation and translation of these collages into paint gestures towards trompe l’œil, down to his faithful representation of his studio walls. He carefully renders and indexes the many pin and nail holes, residual marks from previous paintings, and torn pieces of tape that the wall has accumulated over time, as he considers ways to present both universal and personal histories.

Los Angeles-based Marty Williams—a skilled woodworker and surfer—creates poetic collages of photographs on transparent film, mulberry paper, rare wood, and found oceanic materials like driftwood and abalone shells. Using a self-timer, the artist photographs his own body—seen from behind in small swim trunks or crouched on a surfboard—rendering himself as an anonymous, silhouetted figure. These images are transferred onto transparent film and layered into hazy, spectral compositions that both transpose and obscure the figure. The inclusion of wood—milled from scraps at the frame shop where Williams used to work—is as significant as the photographic imagery. By playing with the unique woodgrain patterns and natural chatoyance (the shimmery effect that light has when reflected on specific grains), Williams builds visual parallels between organic found materials, the surface of water, and the ethereal transparency of the film. In his work, collage functions to equalize imagery and material as he thinks about his place within the typically hyper-masculine worlds of woodworking and surfing.

Hank Ehrenfried (b. 1992, New Jersey) is a painter and currently resides in Oklahoma City, OK. He holds a BFA in Fine Art from Carnegie Mellon University (2014) and a MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute (2019). He has exhibited nationally and internationally with solo exhibitions at Vardan Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) AuxierKline (New York, NY), Quappi Projects (Louisville, KY) and Welcome Gallery (Charlottesville, VA), as well as group exhibitions at Fierman (New York, NY), Fredericks & Freiser Gallery (New York, NY), Semiose Galerie (Paris, FR), and Turley Gallery (Hudson, NY), among others. Ehrenfried has completed residencies at The Macedonia Institute in Chatham, NY and Trestle Art Space in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been written about in publications such as Whitewall Magazine and Two Coats of Paint and has been featured in New American Paintings. He is currently an artist in residence at Artspace, Untitled in Oklahoma City, OK.

Marty Williams (b. 1998, Laguna Beach, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on woodworking based in Los Angeles, CA. He began his sculptural practice by shaping and glassing surfboards in Orange County. In 2023, Williams joined the fine art framing team at Los Angeles’s Paradise Framing and since has built his own woodworking practice. He will be an artist-in-residence on the island of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands this summer 2025.