artist statement.

My work reflects an ongoing inquiry into art as a form that eludes closure and being at an “end”. I seek to find the right processes to express the questions that I am asking about how an artist discovers the art that he is to make. A part of this process has been to identify the means by which the discrete indications embedded in the mundane and in systems of failure and serial ambiguity can be brought to the visual and oracular. I am currently employing various strategies to achieve my goals. In all my artmaking the questions I have serve as launching pads to articulate and give them comprehensive manifestation. As a result, my art can take a myriad of messy and partial forms as I work through overlapping chaotic systems of excess. My coming to terms with the enormities of the world is manifested in lost threads of thought and open-endedness. The excess is poured into the containers of drawing, painting, photography, film, video, sculpture, ceramics, metalsmithing, installation, new media and performance art which are presented as concrete poetics.

artist bio.

Todd Molinari is an artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. He is a new media artist whose artistic practice is expressed in painting, photography, experimental video, film, sculpture, metalsmithing and printmaking, arte util as well as installations and performance art.

He was a former member of Third Room Project in Portland, OR, an artist-run community space and gallery that sought to give space to underrepresented artists and artists from marginalized communities. After Third Room closed in early 2021, he co-founded after/time collective gallery, an artist-run gallery and experimental curatorial platform located in Downtown Portland, Oregon, that exhibits emerging regional, national and international artists and to provide a space for the development of artistic practices commensurate to the challenges and opportunities of the early 21st century and for the reconceptualization of future possibilities for the public art space as contemporary art as a form passes from the scene. He has extensive experience in finances and administration, as well as planning, producing and curating exhibitions, community programming, managing openings and community events.

In addition he has curated a number of exhibitions in Philadelphia, Reykjavik, Iceland, Nantes, France and Portland, OR. His works explore how the artist gets in contact with art and the concretization of material as instantiations of the unworkable. Molinari’s works have been shown in exhibitions in Berlin, Nantes, France, Reykjavik, Iceland, Los Angeles, CA, Brooklyn, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Portland, OR, Salem, OR and Pont-Aven, France; Commissions include The Dream, Salem, OR; He is the recipient of the Patricia and Richard Henkels Award in the Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Todd Molinari received a Certificate in Fine Arts from PNCA, Portland, OR and his MFA at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA and continued studies at SFAI. 







education.

  • Graduate studies at SFAI: FIlm and New Genres
  • MFA, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA, 2013
  • Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Visual Studies, Painting, PNCA, Portland, OR 2010
  • Summer Semester in Drawing, Florence Academy of Arts, Florence, Italy, 2008
  • Semester in Painting, Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Arts, Pont-Aven, France, 2008 (Joint PNCA/RISD international studies program)

selected solo exhibitions.

  • 2020, Lux et tenebris, Silverspace Gallery, Asheville, NC
  • 2019, Trickster of the dark god, Third Room Project, Portland, OR
  • 2019, Dream Sequence I & II, Space Gallery, Claremont, CA
  • 2018, Works, Jailhouse Studio Gallery, Portland, OR
  • 2017, Academy Theater, Portland, OR
  • 2015, Case Study Gallery, Portland, OR
  • 2015, Four Weeks, Denizen Gallery, ArtHaus, Milepost 5, Portland, OR

selected two-person and group exhibitions.

  • 2024, after / time at the Seattle Art Fair, Seattle, WA
  • 2024, point du change, Main Gallery, Ecole des Beaux-arts Nantes, France
  • 2024, Bound, The LMF Gallery, Pasadena, CA
  • 2023, TRYST International Art Fair, Torrance Museum of Art, Torrance, CA
  • 2023, Signs of Impermanence, Zerofeedback at Jinny Street Gallery, Tokyo
  • 2022, MAPS, 80 Albion Gallery, San Francisco, CA
  • 2022, Smart Objects/Flattened Images, Well Well Projects, Portland, OR
  • 2021, Atlas, Carnation Contemporary, Portland, OR
  • 2021, after/time collective members, Joint Compound, after/time collective gallery, Portland, OR
  • 2021, Todd Molinari & Francis Dot, apokalypsis: an unveiling, AVA Gallery, Astoria, OR
  • 2020, Sursurros, Ave Collective at Church Fine Arts, Reno, NV
  • 2019, Allies, Jailbreak Studio Gallery, Portland, OR
  • 2019, no night for this day/Prologue to the Trickster, SIM Artist Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland
  • 2017, The Love Show, Ford Gallery, Portland, OR
  • 2015, Small Works Juried Exhibition, 440 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
  • 2014, Making It, CBS Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2013, WIP, CBS Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2013, The Drawing Show, CBS Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2013, The Story of the Creative, Angel Orensanz Foundation, New York, NY
  • 2013, Binary, Manifesto-ish Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2012, WIP, Gallery 813, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2012, Painting Ain’t Dead, Gallery 224, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2012, Rough House, Gallery 224, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2012, Wet Paint, Gallery 224, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2011, WIP, Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2009, Strong Forces, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR
  • 2007, Final Show, CIS, Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art, Pont-Aven, France

film.

  • Dis/junction, 2022:
    Scarab Film Festival - Official Selection, Dubai, UAE
    First-Time Filmmaker Sessions October 2022 - Official Selection
    Aphelion Film Festival 2023 - Official Selection
    Vienna Short Film Festival 2023 - Official Selection, Semifinalist
    Santa Cruz, CA Film Festival 2024 - Official Selection, Semifinalist

artist talk/interview.

2022, Smart Objects/Flattened Images, Well Well Projects, Portland, OR: Artist Talk hosted by Kelda VanPatten, September 24

awards.

2013, Patricia and Richard Henkels Award in the Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2020-2022: SFAI Graduate Student Scholarship for Film

curating.

  • 2024, after/time booth Seattle Art Fair, Seattle, WA
  • 2024, Bound, The LMF Gallery, Pasadena, CA
  • 2023-2024, AFTER IMAGE 002 with Gina Herrera, after time collective gallery, Portland, OR
  • 2023 TRYST International Art Fair, City of Torrance Museum of Art, CA (Group Exhibition of artists represented by after/time), Torrance, CA 
  • 2023 Passage, Wade Schuster, after/time collective gallery, Portland, OR 
  • 2022 AFTER IMAGE 001: The Third Terrain (Group exhibition), after/time collective gallery, Portland, OR
  • 2021-2022, no new normal, Wendi YuLing Henderson, after/time collective gallery, Portland, OR
  • 2021, A Sermon for Crows, Simone Fischer, after/time collective gallery, Portland, OR
  • 2020, If My Voice Could Speak, Hasler Gomez, Third Room Project, Portland, OR
  • 2020, Spectrum: Francis Dot & Pace Taylor, Third Room Project, Portland, OR
  • 2015, Four Weeks, Denizen Gallery, ArtHaus, Milepost 5, Portland, OR
  • 2012, The Return of Hermes - Direct action performance, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2012, Painting Ain’t Dead, Gallery 224, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2009, Strong Forces, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR

writing.

  • 2024, Thursday for Friday with accompanying video, UdK Berlin
  • 2024, Catalog for mending with Sarah Peters, after / time, Portland, OR
  • 2023-2024, Catalog for AFTER IMAGE 002 with Gina Herrera, after / time collective gallery, Portland, OR 
  • 2023, Essay accompanying TRYST International Art Fair, City of Torrance Museum of Art, CA (Group Exhibition of artists represented by after / time), Torrance, CA 
  • 2023, Catalog for Passage, Wade Schuster, after / time collective gallery, Portland, OR 
  • 2022, Essay in “Fieldnotes: Catalog for AFTER IMAGE 001: The Third Terrain” (Group exhibition), after/time collective gallery, Portland, OR

publishing.

  • Signs of Impermanence, Catalog, Zerofeedback at Jinny Street Gallery, Tokyo, 2023
  • Smart Objects/Flattened Images, 2022
  • Residual Believers, online journal, Issue 2, Winter 2022
  • Harbor Review, “34”, Issue 8, February 2022
  • FotofilmicJNRL, Summer 2021, Issue 9, guest edited by Mariamah Attah
  • Tiding house, Issue 001, Summer 2021
  • Residual Believers, online journal, Issue 1, Summer 2020
  • Harbor Review, “Trickster”, July 2020
  • Curious Publishing, “Biophilia”, Issue No. 3, Spring 2019
  • NWMAW Newsletter, “Interview with Todd Molinari”, May 2019

residencies.

  • “Floating Texts: Unlearning Writing” experimental writing residency for artists, Universitat der Kunst Berlin, August 2024
  • Ecole des beaux-arts Nantes, France, July 2024
  • Sou’Wester Lodge, Seaview, WA, November 2018
  • SIM Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland, July 2019

previous gallery.

©2025 Todd Molinari.  All original media are property of Todd Molinari.