FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Ted Larsen awarded Pollock-Krasner grant
Contact:
Jaquelin Loyd or Mark Thoma
505 995 0231
info@eightmodern.com
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO – Eight Modern is pleased to announce that gallery artist Ted Larsen has been honored with a prestigious 2008 grant from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
Larsen’s bold, inventive approach to sculpture helped him secure the grant, which was established in 1985 to honor the legacy of famed artists Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner by supporting artists around the world who meet the dual criteria of recognizable artistic merit and personal or professional financial need.
The award is considered one of the most prestigious in the art world and is given only to those who have been professional artists for a significant length of time.
It could be said that Larsen has had not one, but two artistic careers. Long a successful watercolor painter, Larsen made an audacious professional decision in the tumultuous wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
While Larsen did not seek to make a clear political statement, he felt inexorably compelled to move beyond the “innocuous” and to dive into a completely new style of art, one that would be as challenging to his mindset and abilities as it would be to its viewers.
Larsen now works with scrap metal, reanimating the detritus of consumer culture, material that is weathered and worn but also irrepressibly durable. Such metals afford Larsen the opportunity to manipulate them in every way he can imagine, by cutting, painting, distressing, bending, and hammering them over and around a wood substructure.
Larsen’s willingness to bend, break, distress and remold his metals recalls the way a painter mixes colors on his or her palette, and the resulting stark steel structures seem another sort of minimalist landscape. Larsen’s current work is metaphorical and non-representative. Yes, he has something to say, but no, he will not make it clear.
“I’m looking for something that’s very enigmatic and is difficult for me to even verbalize,” Larsen said. “I want to remind the viewer of something they know inherently but can’t quite place.”
His work, then, isn’t ultimately about recycling, consumer culture or any other temporal theme, but rather aesthetics. Larsen’s work is purposefully free of obstacles between the viewer and the art. By using simple forms, he allows for a more direct and pure relationship between them.
Larsen’s receipt of a 2008 Pollock-Krasner grant will help him further explore new directions in his sculpture. His newest work will be featured in an exhibition at Eight Modern June 13-July 20.
Eight Modern is open Monday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For further information and image requests, contact Mark Thoma or Jaquelin Loyd via email at info@eightmodern.net or by phone at (505) 995-0231.