Ted Pim “When Time Stood Still…”

Half Gallery

[Image: Ted Pim "Rambling Laughter" (2020) Oil on canvas 44 x 31 in.]

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Half Gallery presents When Time Stood Still… Ted Pim’s first solo exhibition in New York.

Ted Pim grew up in a working-class strict Irish catholic family in Belfast. His grandmother was a well-known dressmaker working from a council house during the height of The Troubles and Pim finds himself interested in the fabrics and garments of historical paintings because of her. “There is something very romantic about her making these opulent dresses for the high class of Belfast while the world outside our family house was a warzone with the British Army on the streets.”

In Wonder Bread Pim takes a crop of Peter Paul Rubens’ Samson and Delilah, focusing on the vibrant swaths of Delilah’s dress and allowing the viewer just a small moment with Samson’s pained face in the top corner. Pim’s paintings lean toward the grotesque, echoing artists such as Glenn Brown and Elizabeth Peyton who also traffic the vernacular of Old Masters.

Pim has always been drawn to the baroque style, “I am fascinated with grand scenes of excess and lavishness. In art school I was always told to stay away from certain themes, appropriating old paintings, using mostly black and incorporating flowers into the work. All of which appear in my paintings.”

In Rambling Laughter Pim incorporates the recognizable flowers of the Dutch Golden Age painters such as van Aelst, Ruysch or Bosschaert, but adds his own stunning depth of field. Disrupting a quiet moment on the canvas, a drip leaves a bloomed tulip and flows down the canvas, butterflies taking their own moment of respite and a male figure; a Puck-like character makes his way between the leaves.

“In the paintings themselves I always try to capture a feeling of stillness. I remember Glenn Brown talking about the slow art movement, as his work takes time, and he wants people to view it slower, not just for five seconds and moving on. I feel very much the same.”

Ted Pim (b. 1987) lives and works in Belfast, Northern Ireland.