I work in video and still images, sculpture, and installation with a focus on industrially made products; cars, car parts, food products, sports equipment, chairs…
My current project, Ekklesiastes, uses standard metal folding chairs in a cumulative act of sculpting, performance, drawing, and photography. I first photograph the chairs in “final” poses. Then I pound them flat with a hand sledge in a performance called Ekklesiastes* while I recite the books of the Bible by memory. The process is a proxy for the individual within the community being drawn through phases of stasis, trauma, entropy, and revision.
I have a parallel series of video/sound works called "circumambulations" where I run around a chair at an increasing pace as though in a chase or a game like musical chairs.
The collective works are a combined into larger installations and exhibitions.
In 2009 I presented Morale Hazard, a solo exhibition at Atlanta Contemporary suspending a 1965 Ford Mustang from the ceiling as a commentary on the U.S. auto‑industry crisis. The following year I completed the XLounge series, an aesthetic modification of Eames Lounge chairs shown at SCOPE NY, which later won a 3‑D Juried Prize at ArtPrize and was included in Consequential Matters at the CDC’s David J. Sencer Museum. My 2018 concept BIOID: A Bio‑Marker Patent Generator was presented in the Venice Architecture Biennale (WORK, BODY, LEISURE: Institute of Patent Infringement) and traveled to the V&A Museum for London Design Week and Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.
*meaning preacher, member of the assembly, teacher, or collector in Greek/Hebrew
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS & SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS
2026 Circumambulation en Fugue, LOOP Installation, curated by Goat Farm & Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA (Forthcoming)
2025 Ekkelsiastes, Performance & Action, Temporary Studios, Atlanta, GA
2024 moment, Day & Night Projects, Atlanta, GA
2024 DEAL, Whitespec, Atlanta, GA
2009 Morale Hazard, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA
2009 Consequential Matters: The XLounge Series, Global Health Odyssey Museum, CDC, Atlanta, GA
2000 USE: Drawings and Sculptures, Kreft Center Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI
INSTITUTIONAL PROJECTS & INTERNATIONAL COMMISSIONS
2018 WORK, BODY, LEISURE: Institute of Patent Infringement, 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice, IT
2018 WORK, BODY, LEISURE, Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), London, UK
2018 WORK, BODY, LEISURE, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, NL
2011 Chromizone, CDC iFund Collaborative Project (SCAD/CDC/INq), Atlanta, GA
2003 A Public Construction: The Bill of Rights, Public Art Commission, Ann Arbor, MI
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS & BIENNIALS
2026 Temporary Art Center Biennial, Lexington, KY
2024 …an Atlanta Biennial…, Temporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA
2024 Reckon, Temporary Studios, Atlanta, GA
2022 Oneness That Is, Too, Art Papers x Temporary Studios, Atlanta Art Week, GA
2019 FLUX Projects: Sound Exhibition, Ponce City Market, Atlanta, GA
2019 DWELLING, Freedom Park Conservancy, Atlanta, GA
2010 ArtPrize: 3-D Juried Competition, UICA, Grand Rapids, MI
2009 Summer Falls, Whitespace, Atlanta, GA
2008 SCOPE NY, International Contemporary Art Fair, Lincoln Center, NY
2008 Art+Space, Herman Miller National Design Center, Washington D.C.
2007 Useless, Project4 Gallery, Washington D.C.
2000 Midwestern Sculpture Exhibition, South Bend Regional Museum of Art, South Bend, IN
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2024 ArtReview, “Talking Atlanta Art Week,” September Issue.
2023 Lost in the Stacks, “Creative Disorientation,” Interview w/ Stuart Romm, WREK Atlanta.
2009 SLEEK Magazine, “Decorate or Deliberate?” Autumn Issue, p. 103.
2009 Core77, “Mark Wentzel’s Fat Eames Chairs,” August 17.
2009 The Los Angeles Times, “Core77 on Mutant Eames Chair,” David A. Keeps, August 18.
2007 The Washington Post, “The Idea: A Plus-Size Eames,” Blake Gopnik, August 26.
2007 The Washington Post, “Singularly Focused Groups,” Mark Jenkins, August 24.
AWARDS, GRANTS & RESIDENCIES
2015 People’s Choice Award, Field Experiment, Goat Farm Art Center, Atlanta, GA
2012 Artist Residency, Prairie Center of the Arts (Asian Carp Research), Peoria, IL
2011 iFund Grant, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, GA
2010 3-D Juried Prize, ArtPrize, Grand Rapids, MI
2009 AIR Program Nominee, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA