Ted Larsen: Works 2007-2023

Ted Larsen: Works 2007-2023 is the first monograph for the visual artist, bringing together over fifteen years of creative output. As contributor David Pagel notes, Larsen’s sculptural works are not easily categorized and often “behave like abstract paintings.” Since 2001, Larsen has sought alternative and salvaged materials in his abstract constructions with the “hope of bringing purist shapes and surfaces back down to earth.” This quest takes Larsen to sites like the metal scrapyard, where he mines the raw material for his work by sawing off sections of older-model vehicles. The works’ surfaces, which hold a particular patinated palette, are unmodified; the colors of the metal that skin the objects—the rusty off-white of an old pickup truck or the vibrant yellow of a decommissioned school bus—are exactly as he found them. Calling to mind both architecture and the reductive forms associated with the Minimalists of the 1960s and 1970s, Larsen’s works upend and defy classification by embracing experimentation, the spontaneous gesture, and the hybrid, while undermining the idea of Modernist purity.

Ted Larsen’s (b. 1964) work has been exhibited widely in private foundations and museums in the US, including the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, The Albuquerque Museum, The Amarillo Museum of Art, The Spiva Center for the Arts in Joplin, Missouri, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as in over 100 gallery exhibitions. He has received grants from the Surdna Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation, as well as residencies with the Edward F. Albee Foundation and Asilah Arts Festival in Morocco, where he was the selected to be the USA representative. He has guest lectured at The South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts in Greenville, South Carolina; University of Art and Design in Santa Fe, New Mexico; The Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California; The New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Texas Society of Architects, Dallas, Texas; the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, Colorado; the Denver Museum of Art, Denver, Colorado.

David Pagel is an art critic, curator, and professor of art theory and history at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. His reviews and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Brooklyn Rail, and Artforum. Recent publications include Jim Shaw, Lund Humphries, London, 2019 and Talking Beauty: A Conversation Between Joseph Raffael and David Pagel about Art, Love, Death, and Creativity, Zero+, Claremont, 2018, as well as catalog essays on John Sonsini, Elliott Hundley, Bret Price, and Dane Goodman. Recently organized exhibitions include “re:Socializing—art out of quarantine” and “Kenneth Noland/August Rodin/Ian Trout,” both at Claremont Graduate University. A self-taught diorama builder and an avid cyclist, Pagel is a seven-time winner of the California Triple Crown.