Todd Kelly

Todd Kelly's paintings consistently spiral between their surface and conceptual depth. Frequently jumping between abstraction and outlined or flattened figuration, Kelly enjoys the interplay between objects, arrangements, and patterns. His work has made successively intricate arguments for the continual pleasures to be found in the arena of still life painting for contemporary painters. With his newest body of work, Kelly has added Op-Art pastel gradients, and now the still-life is "alive" - as actual objects are embedded, dangling, or subsumed in paint. A rebus of meanings is built up, to be considered for its aesthetic, Pop value, and inevitable references to the artist's lived experience.

Originally from Michigan, Todd Kelly lives and works in New York. He began his career in architecture, an influence that still resonates in his work. Kelly earned an MFA at the School of Visual Arts and a B.A. at Anderson University, IN. Recent exhibitions include Transmitter Gallery, Brooklyn; LVL3, Chicago; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia; and the New Bedford Art Museum, MA; and he has been included in exhibitions in London, UK; Galway, Ireland; New York, NY; Spokane, WA; Minneapolis, MN; Albuquerque, NM; and Madison, WI. His work has been featured as an Artforum Critic's Pick, and reviewed in the London Times, the London Paper, Art F City, LVL3, Bmore Art, The New Criterion, Gorky's Granddaughter, and Beard and Brush, among others.