TED LARSEN

Dutko Gallery is pleased to present its first virtual exhibition. This curatorial project focuses on  the American artist Ted Larsen. Through a selection of some twenty artworks, we offer a journey through his artistic practice whose engaging creations challenge the boundaries between painting and sculpture while testing our perception.

His artworks are part of the major artistic revolutions of the 20th century which radically transformed the traditional vision of sculpture as a “space” of stratification and accumulation of non-conventional materials such as aluminium, plastic or polystyrene. Even though the core of Ted Larsen’s sculptures is wood (Baltic birch), his works are based on a logic of assembling metal scraps.

“He uses elements salvaged from junkyards, from cars destined to disappear, to which he offers – along with their colours and textures, found as they are – a second, more harmonious life, now devoid of any practical function, akin to that of each passerby.” (Grégoire Lubineau)

His artworks stand apart from the impersonal perfection of industrial materials and the smooth and flawless surface of modern minimalist sculpture. Recycled materials reveal marks, traces and imperfections preserving memory so as to give the artwork more authenticity and a human essence.

« Radial arcs, flat planes, planar facets, oblique angles and stairstep constructions »: 

nothing is left to chance, a focus on the study of colour assembly and forms in line with geometric abstraction and hard-edge sculpture.

Cubes to be solved, labyrinths, puzzles to be reassembled. Everything thus evokes the dimension of a game and mental construction recalling puzzles, Rubik’s Cube, origami or the modular geometric structures of Tetris.

The assembly of volumes, forms and colours challenges our senses. Like riddles to be deciphered, the artworks engage the viewer in an interpretative process open to multiple readings: “What is the meaning? What message lies behind the artwork?”

"His color palette borrows from  sky and earth - the blue hues that soar above the greens of desert growth, the deep oranges, reds, yellows and browns of clay and sand, cliffs and buttes. Black, white and monochrome reference western art history's abstract minimalist, many of whom found inspiration in the American Southwest, the region where Ted Larsen lives and works".

Even the titles expand the various ranges of interpretations and enter into dialogue contrasting with what the observer may perceive visually: an oxymoron. The contrast between image and title aims at highlighting the non-univocal nature of perception.

“What are the possibilities of considering what a thing is rather than what we think it means?” (Nancy Zastudil)