Alive Today: A solo exhibition by Jonathan Todryk
“My paintings are visual poems. Like language distilled to its most meaningful lines, the work is pared down until subtle shifts and simple marks carry emotional weight.” - Jonathan Todryk
Square One Gallery is pleased to present “Alive Today,” a solo exhibition of new paintings by Jonathan Todryk. Across expansive, softly washed fields of color, Todryk layers wandering lines, abbreviated shapes, rubbed passages, and marks that appear only briefly before receding into the surface. Some gather into loose constellations, while others stretch, circle, and dissolve across the canvas. The paintings hold the visible record of their making, allowing every touch, pause, revision, and erasure to remain part of the finished work.
Todryk’s process is grounded in a willingness to relinquish control, allowing the hand and materials to behave unpredictably while remaining attentive to what emerges. Raw pigment, oil, and the physical surface of the canvas become active participants in the process. Marks are made, veiled, softened, and revealed, creating a balance of intention and chance. This openness allows the paintings to develop naturally, making space to notice what is already present rather than continually reaching toward what comes next.
The works emerge from an awareness of continual change and the passing nature of each moment. Rather than fixing experience into a single image or narrative, they preserve the shifting movement of attention itself. Within their open compositions, faint marks coexist with more insistent gestures, suggesting thoughts, sensations, and memories rising into view before slipping away again. Reduction does not mean emptiness within these works. It is a way of removing distraction until color, movement, material, and touch come more clearly into view.
In a world shaped by speed, distraction, and constant visual noise, “Alive Today” offers another way of looking. These paintings do not demand immediate resolution. They unfold gradually, revealing the weight of a nearly erased line, the movement of a partial gesture, and the life held within an unfinished thought. Through restraint and repetition, Todryk draws attention back to the present and to the quiet details that can only be recognized when we slow down long enough to notice them.
