TED GAHL

Early Years

Born in 1983 in New Haven, Connecticut, Gahl holds a BFA (2006) from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and an MFA (2010) from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island.

Ted Gahl Artworks

Varying in style and scale, Ted Gahl’s paintings contain an array of references to art history as well as his immediate surroundings and subconscious activities.

Painting About the Experience of Painting

Seemingly fragmented from afar, Gahl’s paintings in Night Painter (2011), his first solo exhibition in New York at Dodge Gallery, contained figurative, predominantly architectural shapes such as windows and doors concealed within their layers. With an emphasis on deep blue and grey hues, the paintings explored the experience of painting at night—the literal subject of Can’t Sleep (2011), which contains the two words scrawled at the bottom of the canvas beneath triangular outlines.

Visual Cues

Ted Gahl frequently creates bodies of work in response to specific experiences or visual cues. Painted throughout the winter of 2020 and spring 2021, the paintings shown in his solo exhibition March Pictures at Halsey McKay Gallery, New York, in 2021 revolve around the shape of a 19th-century shaker stove. Large Shaker Stove (2021) centres a black shaker stove with a lengthy, cartoonish neck against a blue-grey background, suggesting the depth of winter, while other paintings contain orange and yellow hues blended across comparatively warm canvases.

Narrative Devices

Whilst not conveying explicit narratives, Ted Gahl’s paintings contain elements that prompt their viewers’ imagination. In his ‘Passenger Paintings’ presented online with Halsey McKay Gallery, for instance, the blurred outlines of figures on station platforms allude to the experience of waiting for a train to arrive. In his solo exhibition She is My Clock at MAMOTH Contemporary, London, in 2022, the artist used cabinets, easels, and screens in the paintings as props to partition the images and explore themes of memory and fiction.

Exhibitions

Gahl’s work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions at galleries and institutions around the world.

Selected solo exhibitions include She is My Clock, MAMOTH Contemporary, London (2022); March Pictures, Halsey McKay Gallery, New York (2021); Paintings, Alexander Berggruen, New York (2020); Towers, Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco (2017); Hibernation Anxiety, Retrospective, Hudson (2016); The Commuter, Mier Gallery, Los Angeles (2015); Night Painter, Dodge Gallery, New York (2011).

Selected group exhibitions include The Glass Bead Game, MAMOTH Contemporary, London (2022); Drawing in Lockdown, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2021); Nostos, Matthew Brown Gallery, Los Angeles (2019); Osyter, Galerie Jacob Bjorn, Aarhus (2018); FFFFFiguration, curated by Jonathan Chapline, Never Gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden (2017); Bill & Ted, Bill Adams & Ted Gahl, Freddy, New York (2016); Suddenly Last Summer, Longhouse Projects, New York (2015); Marquee Moon, Thierry Goldberg, New York (2014).

Gahl’s works reside in public collections including the RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island; and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York.

Website

Gahl’s website can be found here, and his Instagram can be found here.

Tessa Moldan | Ocula | 2022