TODD SEVERSON
from Minneapolis, MN. USA
Lives in Berlin, Germany
Education
1991 MFA
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge LA USA
1986 BFA
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis USA
1984 Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Halifax Nova Scotia Canada
Born in Minneapolis Minnesota. Lived in Nova Scotia, Baton Rouge Louisiana, London, Hamburg Germany, and Houston Texas. I now live with my family in Berlin, Germany.
Immediately after graduate school in Louisiana, (1991) an eight-week trip to London, Hamburg, and Prague turned permanent. After one year in London I moved to Hamburg. The focus of my work had already changed dramatically, resulting in large constellations of small format paintings conceptually based on historical and contemporary portraiture. In Hamburg I began the TAUSEND DEUTSCHE PORTRAITS, a work that developed into over one thousand paintings loosely based on actual portrait images; anti-icons of important historical German figures (oil on wood, lead frames). Eliminating the traditional elements of classic heroic portraiture and installed salon style, without regard for chronology or hierarchy, the Tausend Deutsche Portraits is an actual archive that challenges the conventions of documenting and categorizing culture. The work illustrates my transition from an outsider into another culture and my confrontation with Germany and its complex history.
VITA NAVIS: An extreme ‘personal pantheon’, VITA NAVIS is a 500 painting portrait-mosaic consisting of selected current, historical, subjectively important, famous, or infamous world figures and personalities in the form of a container ship pressing on through the currents of history, floating trash islands of experience, and the barnacles of memory (500 paintings, acrylic enamel on found metal).
It is a composite image of those individuals who formed society, made history. The work shows a matrix or labyrinth of historical and current influences and connections that conceptually form who or what I(we) am(are), happily shared through its collective content.
Selected Exhibitions
2010 INDIVIDUAL TO ICON -FROM FOLK ART TO FACEBOOK
Plains Art Musuem, Fargo ND
2008 LIMINAL Flanders Contemporary Minneapolis MN
NOT NOT CLAY Gallery 13 Minneapolis MN
2007 MINNESOTA BIENNIAL 3D II Minnesota Museum of American Art
MINNESOTA MOSAIC Minneapolis Central Library - Cargill Gallery
NEW ABSTRACTION Flanders Contemporary Minneapolis MN
2005 THREE JEROME ARTISTS Northern Clay Center Minneapolis MN
TYPICAL UNIVERSE Flanders Contemporary Minneapolis MN
2004 THE PRESIDENCY Exit Art NYC NY
Rochester Art Center MOVE, Rochester MN
2003 Flanders Contemporary Minneapolis MN
2002 Minneapolis Institute of Art THREE WAY VISION –MAEP, Minneapolis
TODD SEVERSON Galerie Maximillian Krips Cologne
2001 West u Vereins Bank Foyer fuer Junge Kunst EMPORE Buchholz
Flanders Contemporary Minneapolis MN
2000 Haus am Waldsee / Berlin ARTISTENMETAPHYSIK-
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE IN DER KUNST DER NACHMODERNE
Bielefelder Kunstverein -Museum Waldhof
AM RANDE DES JAHRTAUSENDS Bielefeld
Lawndale Art Center VIS A VIS Houston Texas
1999 TAUSEND DEUTSCHE PORTRAITS Kunsthof Oranienburgerstr Berlin /
Galerie Cato Jans Hamburg
CSPS YES-NOWHERE Cedar Rapids Iowa
CHAINSAW PAINTINGS Galerie Cato Jans Hamburg
Artscan DADA HOU / DADA YOU Houston Texas
1998 NEW Gallery, Houston Texas
1997 PUNCH IN-OUT Kunsthaus Hamburg
EDELTRAUD SAMMLERS BILDER-CAFE Galerie Cato Jans Hamburg
1995 ARENA Mercedeshaus Hamburg
ULLA UND IHR NEUER KREIS Braunschweig Torhaus Braunschweig
HEINRICH DER LOEWE UND SEINE ZEIT Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum
Braunschweig
1994 FUER FN- NIETZSCHE IN DER BILDENDEN KUNST DER
LETZTEN 30 JAHRE
Orangerie Belvedere Weimar
ST KEVINS PARADE Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg
Grants Prizes Public Art
2004 MINNESOTA MOSAIC
Minneapolis Public Library Capital Projects
2004 Jerome Foundation Project Grant NCC
Northern Clay Center Minneapolis
2000 MSAB Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Fellowship
1997 Residency /Grant Bemis Center for Contemporary Art Omaha Nebraska
1997 First Prize KUNST UND KOMMERZ Hamburg
1995 First Prize HEINRICH DER LOEWE UND SEINE ZEIT Herrschaft und
Repraesentation der Welfen 1124 bis 1235 Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum
Braunschweig
Publications -selected
2010 INDIVIDUAL TO ICON -FROM FOLK ART TO FACEBOOK
Plains Art Musuem Fargo ND
exhibition catalog Colleen Sheehy
2002 Mpls Startribune -3-Way Vision MAEP Minneapolis Institute of Art/Mary Abbe
2001 Mpls Startribune JAGGED EDGE Flanders Gallery / Mary Abbe
Haus am Waldsee ARTISTENMETAPHYSIK-FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
IN DER KUNST DER NACHMODERNE Berlin / Barbara Straka
2000 art Oktober Issue 10
EINEM VOLK INS GESICHT GESCHAUT
Martin Tschechne, Hamburg
artlies Texas Art Journal 26 Todd Severson Vis a Vis LAC Houston /
Catherine Anspon
1999 Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin FAZ 21 May issue 1003
ZWISCHEN FREIHEIT UND ANPASSUNG- DEUTSCHE GESICHTER /
Juergen Werner
1997 Kunstzeit- Deutsche Physiognomie-hundertfach / Peter Winter
I Watched A Deer Here For a Very Long Time And Now He is Gone (But Then Another Deer Came and I Watched It Too, For A Little While)
Sleeping Giant Provincial Park
Ontario Canada
My 1984 copy painting, oil on canvas, of an actual painting now attributed to an anonymous painter known only as Pensionante, del Saraceni
(Active 1610-20s) Still-Life with Fruit and a Carafe of White Wine. The painting is not only NOT by Caravaggio, it is not even by a known follower of Caravaggio, Carlo Saraceni. It was done by a ‘roomate’ of Saraceni, allegedly French, and was painted in 1615, five years after Caravaggio’s death.
At the time, I thought I was working from a painting by Caravaggio, as attributed in the book I was using as the source.
This painting was done in 1983 as a student at the NOVA SCOTIA COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada