MAMOTH is pleased to present “Café Nervosa”, Ted Gahl’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from 28 September to 3 November 2023.
"Café Nervosa" presents a selection of new works by Ted Gahl, exploring personal experiences of entrapment, anxiety, joy and longing. Ruminating on these themes since the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Gahl’s new body of work summons nostalgia for the uninhibited café society of the Parisian Belle Epoque, tempered with the encroaching anxieties of the 21st Century and TV sitcom escapism.
The titular work "Café Nervosa" references a meeting place between two psychiatrists in the US TV sitcom Frasier. Reverting to the comfort of TV during the pandemic, Café Nervosa became a symbolic site of yearning for the artist, as he longed for access to public spaces and human interaction. In this context, moments of abstraction in Gahl’s new works become a remedial method of place-making. With fleeting brushstrokes, Gahl creates emotional landscapes – abstract locations inhabited by the spectres of memories and dreams, acting out fragmented narratives, both tragic and romantic.
