The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Artist Interview: Zak Prekop and Eduardo Andres Alfonso, Associate Curator

The catalogue will include a series of interviews conducted in the months leading up to the exhibition, offering deeper insights into Prekop’s creative process.

This exhibition is organized by Eduardo Andres Alfonso, Associate Curator.

Zak Prekop: Durations in on view June 8, 2025 to January 11, 2026.

Artist Interview: Zak Prekop and Eduardo Andres Alfonso, Associate Curator

EA When did you start painting? It seems like you've always been drawing in some way.

ZP There are a lot of artists in my family, so I grew up surrounded by art in Chicago. My dad and brother were both painters—though my dad eventually transitioned to making furniture and other forms of art that weren't strictly painting. I spent a lot of time at museums with my family, looking at paintings from a young age.

I particularly remember seeing René Magritte at the Art Institute of Chicago, especially a piece from his famous series of “window paintings,” where the view out of the window is incorporated into the painting itself. [i] The idea of transparency and obstruction still resonates with how space functions in my paintings.

EA Could you expand on how Magritte's ideas have influenced and shaped your own work?

ZP Initially, I thought of it as something I enjoyed as a kid—Surrealism tends to resonate with children. But specifically, I remember his painting of the horse in the forest [René Magritte, The Blank Signature, 1965], where the trees intersect the view of the horse—some parts are in front, some are gaps, and others are behind. That kind of layering and blocking of views feels relevant to my work. The interplay of those layers is compelling. I also admire his more minimal, almost featureless works. They're about stripping things down.

That ethos really took hold for me when I moved to Pittsburgh in high school. I was struck by the Carnegie International, which featured works by Agnes Martin and Georg Baselitz. [ii] I even did imitations of Martin's paintings in my high school art class—it was an easy way to start.

EA With the exception of Agnes Martin, it strikes me that two of the three painters you’ve mentioned paint human and animal figures. Did you begin from a place of representational painting, and move towards the process-based work?

ZP Early on, I did character drawings and incorporated animals and figures in my schoolwork. I also experimented with figure drawing. Later, I went through a phase where I used photographs as source material, but in a very zoomed-in, abstract way. I would randomly pick the same corner of a stack of photos, which led to paintings of things like curbs or car headlights. That’s probably the closest I came to representational painting. As I was figuring out what and how to paint, I think I gradually let go of the “what to paint” question and it became more about how to put things together. By not worrying about what it was, I could focus on the process— what I was doing, how I was doing it, and how it looked. I enjoy spending time inside the painting, composing elements, and working with balance and gravity within the frame. It’s almost like a musical process—working with rhythm and harmony. That’s enough for me.

[i] René Magritte's The Promenades of Euclid (1955) was included in the exhibition Magritte, which was on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from March 20 to May 30, 1993.

[ii] The 1995 edition, curated by Richard Armstrong and Paola Morsiani, featured a diverse array of artists. The exhibition was notable for its ambitious scope, with each of the thirty-seven artists represented by a selection of works substantial enough to stand alone as a gallery show. These works were integrated among the existing museum collection, allowing visitors to experience contemporary art in dialogue with historical pieces.