Todd Colby

Exhibition Dates: March 4 - March 8, 2025
Opening reception: Thursday, March 6 @ 6PM

39 White Street, Tribeca

Q&A with Todd Colby

How did collage come to constitute your primary medium?

TC: Collage became a focus for me in the 90’s when I was the singer for the band Drunken Boat, in NYC. I made all the posters that we’d wheat paste all over the Lower East Side late at night. It meant I had to come up with images that would be startling and direct, but also a little, like, “WTF?” So I would make photo copies at work from all sorts of places and then reassemble them at night into posters, postcards, album covers, etc. It was liberating and felt oddly utilitarian and not the least bit precious or arty; collage will always feel punk to me. There have been a lot of badass collage artists over the past few centuries. 

Your works take directly from appropriated images—what is your source material typically?

TC: I’ve always kept boxes of old, illustrated martial arts manuals, farming handbooks, antique kid’s books, coloring books, furniture catalogues and everything in between. When I get stuck with a painting, I love to visit my boxes of images and start making magic happen. I like the little buzz-tingle I get when I glue the first piece into place at the start of a new collage. After that, something else takes over and it becomes instinctual and immersive. Tiny little miracles happen with every good collage. I’m on the look out for miracles all the time. 

What are your biggest artistic influences?

I adore Ray Johnson, Joe Brainard, and George Schneeman. They were masters and always say “YES!” when I have little imaginary visitations with them in my studio. Amy Sillman and Sue Williams have been real guideposts for me as well. I like that they both make collages and are great painters. As a painter/collagist, I appreciate their mutability and razor sharp humor. 

Can you tell us more about your style of collaging? What does fragmentation do/say in your work?

With the series of collages assembled here at 1969, I wanted to see what would happen if I made collages from rectangles, squares, and longer strips, instead of juxtaposing one object with another in that surreal way that seems too familiar now. These pieces feel successful at jumbling the image enough that it opens a perceptual crack and allows the image to be more lively and dynamic. They move! In modern terms, they do appear to be glitchy video stills, but they go beyond that, because the image is static, the movement comes from the eyes dancing over the collaged material, like trying to reassemble an afterimage. I like that sort of relationship with a work of art. It’s physical, pleasantly inscrutable, and magnetic.

What can collage communicate that other mediums might not be able to?

I think of William Burroughs, who was the great literary collagist of our time. His explorations into cutting whole pages of text and reassembling creates an unexpected almost alchemical reaction from these colliding blocks of text put together like a collage. He literally sliced up syntax to liberate the mind. I think the same thing is possible in visual art, as well. As a practicing poet, painter, and collagist, I refuse to see any difference between any of them. They all co-mingle and communicate in their own peculiar way, and they quite enjoy each other.

For Price List, please contact:
Quang Bao I quang@1969gallery.com

Todd Colby | Draw the Curtains and Stop Aching So, 2024 
paper collage on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | Emotional Breakfast 2, 2024
paper collage on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | Memory Machine, 2024
paper collage on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | Night Jitters, 2024
paper collage on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | Nothing is Delayed, 2024
paper collage on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | King of Funk, 2024
acrylic and gold leaf on burlap on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | Gloria, 2024
paper collage on wood panel | 20h x 16w

Todd Colby | Emotional Breakfast 1, 2024
paper collage on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | Radiant, Forgetful, 2024
paper collage on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | What a robot sees when it sees another robot, 2024
paper collage on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | Slow Sparks, 2024
paper collage on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | Nine E’s, 2024
acrylic and burlap on wood panel | 10h x 8w inches

Todd Colby | Regalia, 2024
paper and crayon on wood panel | 20h x 16w