TODD SCHROEDER
X - Rated
Purple X, 2020, 60” x 48”
Exhibition Details
February 12th — April 19th
Reception with the Artist: Friday, February 12th, 2021 4-9 PM
Laney Contemporary is pleased to present work by artist Todd Schroeder in a solo exhibition entitled X - Rated. The selection comprises numerous new works completed between 2019 and early 2021. It includes both large and small scale paintings, prints, and some forty works on paper presented in the flat files. The title X - Rated is a reference to the letter or gesture of X which looms large in Schroeder’s work as both figure and ground, a mark that, in a kind of Dada and poetic vein, signals many possible meanings, both visual and linguistic. The X can be both image and text. An X may indicate either no or yes; it may be a negation or a choice. It marks accuracy, but also signals STOP. The X can be a Punk gesture, rejecting convention or entire systems as a mode of energizing toward change. The X is Malcolm X and the rejection of a tainted history and of his family name, Little, in favor of a new place of origin. X - Rated also connects with our current times; works like Yellow X and 2020XL were produced at the height of the BLM protests in solidarity. An X is a signature, a rating of violent or sexual content, an expression of love, a kiss, a variable, or a value not yet known. In four of the paintings, the artist notes, the X represents “the figure,” but at the same time the X acts as a window to “the ground.” In this sense, the work deals in paradox and in the idea that within contradiction lies the truth.
Whirling motion visualized, traces of paint dance and drip outward as if flung by a spinning dervish within Schroeder’s paintings. His use of the title Ego Tomb for these paintings, is a translation of the conical hat called a sikke, which is worn by whirling dervishes of Turkish and Persian origin, who spin into a meditational or trance-like state as a remembrance of God. It is an action so engrossing that the self is lost in the process. The notion of a trance-like practice as part of abstract painting has been connected to Schroeder’s studio for years. His work embraces constancy and attention to painting as a daily act of making. It recognizes abstraction as a conceptual practice of time and action. Both methodical and open to chance, many of Schroeder’s works come from a place of daily or weekly direct actions in response to current events. The series entitled ALove Supreme in this exhibition has roots in this ongoing practice and is also inspired by the Jazz improv of the great John Coltrane and the idea of becoming fully immersed in deep improvisation. This method, as Schroeder notes, is “a vehicle for departure…and a way to embrace a more universal spirituality.” A Love Supreme: Ego Tomb provides a link between past and present works by the artist in that the gridded dot matrix of the newspaper serves as the temporal and compositional ground while the improvisational marks of the fast-paced, whirling, paint-action wipe away a sense of time or structure. The result is a tension between time marked and time forgotten. Using knives, brushes, and sometimes paper towels in a kind of cleaning away gesture, as well as sanding, layering, and masking, the works energetically start fresh and throw sparks, marking a new time, rejecting old systems and a tired sense of ego, getting lost in the act of making as a way to find.
