Hank Ehrenfried’s process begins with the assemblage of collages made from old auction catalogs, gay erotica, instructional guides, museum catalogs, and other assorted imagery. Materials are cut, folded, and stuck back together repeatedly to make haphazard compositions that force histories and images together unexpectedly. These collages are then affixed to the walls of his studio and painted from life as trompe l’oeil. The paintings themselves do not confess to ownership of this imagery and their origins, only the plain observation of their time stuck to the studio wall.

The paradox of pictorial excess and the inevitable violence as loss through an archival act is central to Ehrenfried’s process. Folds in the collage pull information out of view, simultaneously present and erased in the translation from paper to paint; pin and screw holes in the studio wall rupture the actual studio wall and the seemingly flat surface of the painting. Decay through time is inevitable but what remains points one hand towards history and another towards the predictable and unknowable nature of what follows.