Zak Prekop: Noise

HAGIWARA PROJECTS is pleased to present Noise, a solo exhibition by Zak Prekop, opening on Saturday, September 12, 2026. The exhibition marks Prekop’s first solo presentation at the gallery in seven years.

Zak Prekop (b. 1979, Chicago) is an artist based in New York State. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008 and also studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany.

Prekop’s paintings begin with quick, spontaneous marks executed with palette knives. He makes stencils by painting on glassine paper and cutting out the brushstrokes, which he then superimposes onto the painted surface, positioning each subsequent shape inside, outside, behind and in front of what is already there. By repeating this process, multiple forms and compositions accumulate and overlap, resulting in intricate geometric paintings in which there is no fixed point from which the image can be read.

At first glance, Prekop’s finished paintings may suggest digitally generated imagery. Yet their complex surfaces are created through a distinctly physical and repetitive process: cutting paper, placing the stencils, and tracing their contours by hand. Through this repeated process, forms and colors accumulate, overlap, and interact, gradually giving the paintings a dense and complex visual structure. This layering also shapes the way the paintings are experienced. The image cannot be taken in all at once; instead, it unfolds gradually as the viewer moves between its various forms, lines, and layers.

With a deep interest in a wide range of music, from noise and minimal music to techno and jazz, Prekop approaches music not as something that moves linearly from start to finish, but as a space where multiple sounds and layers overlap, and where stillness and motion coexist. Similarly in his painting, Prekop builds relationships where shapes, colors, lines, and layers interact with one another as he accumulates them on the canvas. This closely mirrors the act of a composer assembling various sounds to create a single piece of music. For him, a painting is not merely a static image to be looked at; it is an experience where viewers trace the structure for themselves, sensing an “image as movement” in which repetition, layering, rhythm, and visual noise harmoniously reverberate.