Al Taylor “Pet Stains, Puddles, and Full Gospel Neckless”
David Zwirner 20th Street
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David Zwirner announces an exhibition of drawings and three-dimensional constructions by Al Taylor, the artist’s fifth solo show at the gallery. The exhibition presents a comprehensive examination of Taylor’s Pet Stains and Puddles, which encompass a large grouping of interconnected series that were created between 1989 and 1992; and works from Taylor’s later series Full Gospel Neckless (sic) that the artist made in Denmark for his 1997 solo exhibition at Galleri Tommy Lund.
In the fluid and lyrical drawings and constructions on view from Taylor’s Pet Stains and Puddles series, the artist used his observations of everyday street puddles and pavement stains as a jumping-off point to explore states of liquidity altered by the passage of time. To construct the three-dimensional works he collectively titled Pet Stain Removal Devices, Taylor utilized Plexiglas as a painting surface (conjoined in tiers on wood blocks or suspended from wires), which allowed him to play with the space occupied by the constructions and focus on the illusionary fracturing or spreading of opaque paint seen through the transparent planes. By providing multiple vantage points, the trails of paint applied to each plane sometimes appear to be continuous, and at other times, broken.
In Elapse Time (1990), the artist theoretically measures how long a liquid spill might “stretch” given a certain force and the diverting effects of gravity, while Taylor’s Endless Puddle (1990) humorously poses the possibility of an infinity loop in which a puddle might endlessly circulate. The dedication of another work from 1990, Black Piece (for Etienné-Jules Marey), reflects the artist’s fascination with the sequential steps involved in a single movement, unseen by the naked eye, but revealed in the time-lapse photography of Marey, the French physiologist who invented a method of producing a series of successive images of a moving body on the same negative in the late nineteenth century. Also reflected in this group of works is Taylor’s acknowledged interest in Chinese scroll painting, in which the scenes depicted unfold gradually as the viewer walks along the painting’s length, thus demanding a constantly shifting viewpoint.
Media
Schedule
from January 09, 2015 to February 14, 2015
Saturday, January 17, 11am: A Conversation Between Mimi Thompson and Stanley Whitney on the Work of Al Taylor
Opening Reception on 2015-01-09 from 18:00 to 20:00