Ted Larsen — Out of the Ordinary — DUTKO / Ile St. Louis Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 14 → October 26, 2024

From September 14 to October 26, 2024, Galerie Dutko is pleased to present “Out of the Ordinary”, the new solo exhibition by American artist Ted Larsen. For the artist’s third exhibition with the gallery, some thirty recent works will be presented in the Ile Saint-Louis space. Art critic Grégoire Lubineau will write the catalog’s foreword.

Born in South Haven, Michigan, Ted Larsen grew up in a family of artists. This environment naturally led to his training in the fine arts. Fascinated by the geological power of the Great Lakes region, the first part of his artistic career was spent as a landscape painter, “Abstract Landscapes”. Until 2001, he enjoyed a certain success with his paintings and was featured in numerous exhibitions. Gradually, however, he began to feel a sense of dissatisfaction, as if something fundamental was eluding him in his artistic practice. The shock of September 11 marked a radical change in his work. Deeply affected by the event, he spent several weeks unable to paint. When he returned to the studio, completely different gestures emerged.

Using surfaces fashioned from salvaged materials or pre-painted metal, often from car wrecks — “non-art materials” as he calls them — Ted Larsen creates three-dimensional wall objects by applying these inimitably colored surfaces, shaded by time, accidents and the elements, to wooden frames. These “Shaped Paintings”, hybrid objects with obvious sculptural qualities, question the concepts of painting and sculpture, and push back the boundaries of distinction.

Exploring the relationship between the work and its space of visibility, Ted Larsen blurs the lines by questioning the frontal nature of the wall hanging traditionally reserved for painting. The reduced size of these works is also a way of involving the viewer, inviting him or her to get closer and explore the spatial nature of the pieces, as do the oxymoronic titles, which bring dualities into confrontation and invite reflection.

Ted Larsen bases his artistic research on the heritage of the Russian Suprematists, the De Stijl movement, the American Minimalists and the developments proposed by Non-Objectivity. What these influences have in common is an attachment to simple geometric forms, the primacy of pure artistic feeling over illusionist representation, and the importance given to the plurality of modes of perception.