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.
Read MoreSeemingly 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.
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.
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.
