COLLAGE ON VIEW
Ted Larsen: park drive
at Jack Fischer’s Minnesota Street Project
in San Francisco, California, USA
20 April-25 May 2019
“park drive”, by New Mexico-based Ted Larsen, shows a series of new pieces implementing the artist’s technique of seeking salvage material from unusual “non-art materials” such as old auto body parts, furniture, and industrial equipment. By re-purposing these materials he creates new kinds of ready-made abstract sculptures that are surprisingly elegant and, at the same time, makes fun of modernist purity.
Ted Larsen says about his work:
“Memory is a funny thing. We lose it little by little over time, away from events and circumstances that made impressions upon us. We can also invent or embellish our memories of things over time. Going even further, we can cross-match our remembrances, creating new, fictitious memories. All of the circumstances around memory have a common thread—erasure.
“I work with materials that have memories of their own previous existence, and yet I deny these histories. I use them in service of a different memory: art’s history. The difference between Art History and art’s history is the former concerns itself with the progression of art through the history of mankind while the latter is interested in how art possesses our history. I use these pre-made surfaces and elements to speak to and challenge our known ideas of art’s history. That act of possession itself becomes a sort of relative position, one in which fiction can play a role.
“I deconstruct elements of European and American-based formalism and rebuild them with parts coming out of a decidedly Asian aesthetic. In the process, by eliminating aspects of some of these histories, I am creating a new, blended historical trajectory.”
(adapted from the gallery’s press materials)
INFORMATION
Jack Fischer Gallery
Minnesota Street Project
1275 Minnesota Street
San Francisco, California 94107 USA
(415) 522-1178
Hours:
Tuesday by appointment
Wednesday-Saturday, 11AM-5:30PM
Image:
Partial Conclusion
by Ted Larsen
10″x11″x4.5″
salvage steel, various hardwoods, silicone, vulcanized rubber, wooden dowels, hardware,
2018
Courtesy of the artist and Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco