Todd Norsten

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Born 1967, St. Cloud, Minnesota

Initially Todd Norsten’s subject matter may appear simple—a playful bear, a melted snowman—but gradually the complexities unfold. The bear is a target; the snowman is bleeding. His paintings and prints are at once straightforward and mysterious, the product of scrupulous craftsmanship, a respect for art historical precedent, and a taste for the absurd. For the Highpoint monoprint The End (2016) (cat. no. 238) , for example, Norsten effected the look of a church sign announcing next week’s sermon. In The Wages of Sin (2016) (cat. no. 241) , made the year Donald Trump was elected president, he gave a political context to the Romans 6:23 verse about sinners and death. “It’s about people getting away with stuff,” Norsten says.¹ For that work he replicated the adhesive letters, along with their inevitable misalignment, that people put on their mailboxes. The monoprint Uncle Sam #1 (2016) (cat. no. 239) , he says, is about what it means to grow up in small-town America “without thinking too much about it.” An avid duck hunter, he uses for inspiration the handmade signs, billboards, and other curious things he sees while driving across the northern plains to go hunting.

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Norsten grew up in the country near Willmar, Minnesota, where his parents owned a paint store. Some of his earliest art supplies were mis-mixed cans of Pittsburgh paint. When his father wasn’t working in the store or teaching eighth-grade English, he painted houses and took his son along to watch. Norsten developed a long-standing relationship to paint. He’s interested in stretching the boundaries of what it can do—like painting with the rubbery skin that develops on paint when uncovered. Paint is also his subject. One of his more minimalist series was based on paint chips; another depicted a can of Tru-Test paint . Still others mimicked blue painter’s tape. For Ceaseless, Endless, Timeless, Boundless (2010) (cat. no. 234) , six layers of white were laid down so that the blue ink, instead of being absorbed, would sit slightly higher on the surface, like real tape. As in much of Norsten’s art, the words and image in Ceaseless, Endless, Timeless, Boundless are contradictory; the purpose of painter’s tape is to set boundaries, then be removed. For the trompe l’oeil print Something Real Authentic True (2011) (cat. no. 236) , Norsten created the illusion of dust and hairs trapped under clear tape. “I take extreme measures to make it look sloppy,” he says. His favorite quote from the painter Philip Guston speaks of such labors: “It’s a long, long preparation for a few moments of innocence.”

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Norsten graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1990. In addition to the 2006 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and many other exhibitions, his recent solo shows include “Palookaville” (2018), Federica Schiavo Gallery (now Schiavo Zoppelli), Milan; “The Future The Past” (2017), Adams and Ollman, Portland, Oregon; and “Edited for Content” (2013), Weinstein Gallery, Minneapolis. He has received a McKnight Visual Arts Fellowship (1998) and Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists (1995–96). Norsten lives in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, in a house on the Mississippi River.

—Marla J. Kinney