Henry Taylor | Gallerist NY

Gallerist NY has published an interesting article by Michael H. Miller on Henry's current mini retrospective at MOMA PS1.
Read it here.

Henry Taylor | MOMA PS1

Henry Taylor
On view January 29, 2012—April 9, 2012

Los Angeles-based artist Henry Taylor (American, b. 1958) applies his brush both to canvas and to unconventional materials—suitcases, crates, cereal boxes, cigarette packs—offering a refreshing, idiosyncratic perspective on culture and politics using everyone and everything around him as source material. While Taylor drew and painted in his youth, he studied art later in life, attending the California Institute of the Arts after working for ten years as a psychiatric technician at a state hospital. In the months preceding the exhibition, the artist will be in residency in one of MoMA PS1's former classrooms, using it as his New York studio to create new work for the exhibition.

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at the intersection of 46th Ave.
Long Island City, NY 11101
(718) 784-2084
Hours12–6 PM, Thursday through Monday, closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Tableshow + Andrew Hahn | TryHarDer

Some pics from our last show and Andrew's Studio next door on TryHarDer.
Click to view. and here too.

Henry Taylor | TryHarDer

TryHarDer has posted some pictures from WPA member, Henry Taylor's current show at Blum And Poe. Click here to see the pictures.

Henry Taylor | Opening @ Blum and Poe

Blum & Poe is very pleased to present its first solo exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Los Angeles-based artist Henry Taylor.

In Henry Taylor's work, the line between art and life is often indistinguishable: freely commingling intensely personal figurative paintings with totemic assemblage sculpture. Taylor has developed a unique visual dialect wedded to the downtown - Los Angeles community he calls home, addressing his subjects with the ease of an insider and the hand of an outsider. Taylor's nuanced portraits shed a sentimental light on near and dear friends, family members, lovers and heroes, both dead and alive, real and imagined. They are non-hierarchical, generous and democratic likenesses of the people most central to his life and thought, with equal emphasis placed on a portrait of his niece and nephew in relaxed pose or larger than life statuesque representations of Serena Williams or Jackie Robinson. An acute documentarian of his community, Taylor fits squarely into the lineage of painter as social observer, channeling amongst others, Alice Neel, Toulouse Lautrec and John Singer Sargent.

Taylor's paintings and sculptures are often constructed in a frenetic manner with partial gestures, half-phrases or incomplete figures painted on surfaces as varied as cigarette packs, cereal and beer boxes or suitcases. These objects, prior to Taylor's intervention, were left for dead on street corners and in dumpsters, but when salvaged by the artist, become fair game, to be used as integrated components in sculptures or as alternative surfaces to stretched canvas for painting. Most recently Taylor has begun collecting emptied Clorox bleach bottles, which when spray painted black and inverted on broomsticks take the form of African tribal masks or dancing statues. Propped on constructed bases of plywood and held together by whatever means necessary, these figures come to life, defined both by their unique handmade construction and shabby materiality. They exist as accumulations of found objects intimately linked to their surroundings, repurposed and breathed with life by their maker.

Taylor's vernacular is the street. His studio practice is deeply informed by its sights and sounds, and most notably by its people; those who move freely between Taylor's life and studio, often only long enough to have their portrait painted once. These personalities, along with the historical figures who find their way into Taylor's work, are rendered with a dignity and soul, befitting their place within Taylor's world.

Henry Taylor (b. 1958, Oxnard, CA) has been honored with solo museum exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 2007, the Santa Monica Art Museum, Santa Monica, CA, 2008 and will be included in the forthcoming exhibition, Human Nature: Contemporary art from the Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA. Taylor has been included in group exhibitions at the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL, MOCA North Miami, Miami FL, Peres Projects, Berlin, Jack Hanley Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and Milliken Gallery, Sweden. Henry Taylor received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from California Institute of the Arts and lives and works in downtown Los Angeles.

Blum & Poe | 2727 S La Cienega Blvd. | Los Angeles | CA | 90034

Henry Taylor | Slideshow

Slides of Henry's ongoing exhibition are now up on the current page of the website.

Henry Taylor | Opening

Henry Taylor | Couch Paintings
September 30 - October 23
Opening Reception | Thursday September 30th 7-10pm.

WPA is proud to present a new exhibition from Henry Taylor,
Couch Paintings.

Gallery hours:
Open 12-6pm, Thursday - Saturday or by appointment.