Theis Wendt Denmark, 1981

Applying a broad range of materials – both the organic and the synthetic – Wendt’s creative process combines sculpture, installation and post-photography into illusionary works that demand viewers’ careful examination. Here, materials seem to mimic others, and faint impressions of nature are conjured by digital means. As with any image, looked upon with any first glance, things are rarely as they appear.

Central to Wendt’s practice are age-old questions of authenticity; his works assert that our relationship to the world – and understandings of reality – have been significantly altered by a seismic shift in the tools with which we access it. The motif of the frame, or of the window, then, becomes a recurrent reminder of the stifling structures through which we continue to think and see. But beyond addressing the dystopian challenges we face, from ecological degradation to the ceaseless grip of capitalism, Wendt’s works maintain a romantic quality, pointing to something else on the horizon – something better, perhaps, if we can find the tools to imagine it. 

Wendt’s works have been exhibited at San Diego Art Institute, San Diego; Brandts Sculpture Triennal, Odense; Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles; Kalmar Konstmuseum, Kalmar; and Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen.