Artist: Todd Norsten
Exhibition title: Chase The Ace
Venue: Adams and Ollman, Portland, US
Date: January 9 – February 14, 2015
Photography: Courtesy of the artist and Adams and Ollman
Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce a solo presentation of new works by Todd Norsten on view at the gallery January 9 through February 14, 2015. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and in Portland, Oregon.
Norsten’s subtle and evocative paintings are filled with rudimentary marks, sloppy lettering, awkward cropping and sometimes dirty surfaces. Upon first glance they look careless or naive. Closer examination reveals that hours of care and attention were spent rendering a smear or accurately recreating a hastily scribbled word.
Minimal and often text-based, Norsten’s works make clear his dedication to and faith in the act of painting. Paintings such as The End Is At Hand Again, a trompe-l’œil text work that appears to be fashioned from blue painter’s tape, are deceptively simple and amazingly concise as they implicate the history of painting and its near constant death and rebirth, as well as humorously reference de-skilling, doomsday prophecies, found text as poetry and Americana.
Todd Norsten was born in Minnesota in 1967 where he continues to live and work. He has exhibited at galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Asia and was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His work is in the collections of the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center, as well as numerous private collections.
