Ted Gahl

Harkawik is pleased to present Le Goon, our second solo exhibition with painter Ted Gahl. Building on imagery he developed in Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, here he delves further into an ocean of muted memories and historical associations that are legible only as hazy apparitions. Gahl charts a course through an emotionally charged landscape: a trench where isolation and connection embrace, where melancholic figures strain to make contact with an ineffability beyond the border of the canvas. The frames on Gahl’s smaller paintings are composed of chopped paint stirrers, a nod to the artist’s youth spent painting houses and lattice framing techniques of the past, as well as an interest in blending high and low culture. He juxtaposes smaller figurative works with gargantuan 8-feet tall paintings that cascade down unstretched canvas, rooted in abstraction inspired by landscape. These large paintings are intuitive, with one movement or color influencing the next, allowing the artist the physical space to deepen his investigation of consciousness. He calls these works “tarps,” a nod to the cloths thrown down to catch errant paint drips. Here, he deepens his ethical engagement with the many modalities of paint and creative labor.

Ted Gahl obtained his BFA from Pratt Institute in 2006 and MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2010. Recent solo exhibitions include Mamoth, London; Harkawik, Los Angeles; Halsey McKay, East Hampton; Massif Central, Brussels; Alexander Berggruen, New York. Recent group exhibitions include Valentin, Paris; Bjorn & Gundorph, Aarhus, Denmark; S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium; Halsey McKay, East Hampton. Gahl is a 2022 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. He lives and works in Northwest Connecticut and Brooklyn, New York.