Ted Savinar

Pictures That Talk surveys the last twenty-two years of the work of American artist Tad Savinar. Throughout his forty-three-year career, Savinar has included the use of texts and language as a central element within his work. He is a keen observer of contemporary life, and his works reflect an uncanny ability to identify behaviors and events, which, for good or bad, have shaped our lives, our cities and our beliefs. An illustrated essay rather than a traditional exhibition catalogue, the book focuses on fourteen individual works (prints and sculpture), while Linda Tesner’s accompanying essay places Savinar’s work in the context of some of his contemporary peers. The publication includes a number of pages which fold out to reveal large scale reproductions as well as details.

Tad Savinar (born 1950) has exhibited widely, including at the New Museum and Artists’ Space in New York, the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Atlanta Contemporary, the Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle), the Portland Art Museum and the Portland Center for Visual Art. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Smithsonian Institute, The Norton Museum of Art (Miami) and the Design and Architecture Museum at the University of California at Santa Barbara, among others.

Linda Tesner is the director and curator of the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art at Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon. She has authored several monographs and essays on contemporary art and artists.