Todd: a name that rings with churchly significance, like that of a saint. (There are none, in fact.) In Middle English, it means “fox,” and goes no further back. A letter longer than the German Tod (an old word for an old god; namely, death), it contains within it a certain solemnity of purpose. In Thomas Eggerer’s “Todd” (all works ), one of nine paintings of men posed around manholes (and some manholes without men), it appears to be the name of a shirtless boy lying on pavement, the legs of a friend in athleisure posed above him, belonging to no one we can see. He is young, the sewer lid forming an iron halo around his tousled head, and he holds his hand to his mouth while around him cigarettes drift across the sidewalk. A ring of keys lies near him. Eggerer positions his viewer above the painting’s subject, as he does in all of his new work at Petzel Gallery (the exhibition also named “Todd”) – like angels stealing a view of the living caught in the Jetztzeit economies of the street, where boys exchange cash and beer and cigarettes, coffee cups and receipts flutter with leaves, and empty bodega bags mingle among snaking extension cords.
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