NYAB Event - Zin Taylor "The Bakery of Blok and the Three Forms of Unit"

Zin Taylor "The Bakery of Blok and the Three Forms of Unit"

Miguel Abreu Gallery

This event has ended.

Miguel Abreu Gallery presents The Bakery of Blok and the Three Forms of Unit, Zin Taylor’s first one-person exhibition at the gallery.

Zin Taylor continues to explore the development of form as a densely layered process akin to organic growth. In this exhibition he presents an integrated group of works comprised of wood sculptures, photographs and a single channel video, all linked through the culturally potent metaphor of bread making – a process involving basic elements, activating agents, chemistry and time. Taylor's generating elements, the daily consideration of pieces of bread and a group of abandoned blocks of wood found in his Brussels studio, are set in a narrative of transformation in which they become tools for populating their environment with other forms.

Each of the repeated fifteen sculptural items arranged atop various cubes in the show is the result of a linguistic translation of text into form. “In researching bread production, Taylor states, I came upon instructions and lists for a necessary series of implements needed to make bread. Illustrations showing the appropriate items were routinely absent. As a programmatic working rule, I did not seek out visual references for each tool. Instead, I set about producing sculptural translations of each item as I interpreted it. The knife, spoon, scraper, tray, weights, scale, and containers represent what I have versioned as a depiction of the written item. Each item records my use of a constructed language, a fashioning of material into form.”

It can also be said that form here is the result of a self-reproducing character in a suggested plot where pieces of dough, for instance, re-animate into living beings. As in earlier works, such as his 2007 video Put Your Eye in Your Mouth: A Conversational Documentary Recording Martin Kippenberger's Metro-Net Station in Dawson City, Yukon, Taylor appropriates popular media formats. The Bakery of Blok and the Three Forms of Unit may be seen as an audience testing pilot mechanism, like those used for proposed television series, including a partial set, some short clips along with promotional posters. By repurposing familiar narrative modes, Taylor's ensemble mimics the larger processes of history involving memory and forgetfulness. These works are playful, yet embedded with traces of their making accrued across several media.

Operating as a kind of sequel or elaboration upon a previous production, The Bakery of Blok and the Three Forms of Unit follows The Bakery of Blok exhibition held earlier this year in Toronto at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects.