NEW YORK: Henry Taylor

Henry Taylor, Man on Horse With Hat, Marta Naples (Detail), 2014, Acrylic on canvas,  58..25 x 69.75 inches. Image via blumandpoe.com.

Henry Taylor

March 1 - April 4, 2015

BLUM & POE

19 East 66th Street

New York, NY

UNTITLED

30 Orchard Street

New York, NY

From Blum & Poe web site:

Blum & Poe, in conjunction with UNTITLED, is pleased to announce a two-part solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Henry Taylor.

Continuing his long-standing investigation into portraiture, Taylor instills his paintings with a multitude of observations, portraying not only the subject, but also a broader social stance. Grounded in realism and energized with a raw simplicity and idiosyncratic detail, his paintings address both political and historical concerns related to the human condition. In Taylor's hands, the canon of portraiture is not merely a convention, but rather a system through which the artist processes his views, travels, and interactions in the world.

Taylor's paintings and sculptures offer a window into the experiences of an avid chronicler, capturing his immediate environments, whether within his studio or recent travels to Haiti, Columbia, Cuba, Ethiopia, and Texas. Functioning as source material for his works, Taylor's copious notes, photographs, and sketches contribute to a practice that is immediate in its execution and generous in spirit, always connected to the communities in which the artist places himself.

Henry Taylor was born in Oxnard, CA (1958) and studied painting at California Institute of the Arts. His most notable exhibitions include a retrospective at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; Body Language, Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; 2013 Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Blues for Smoke, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Made in LA, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Human Nature: Contemporary Art from the Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and 30 Americans, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL.

Exhibit Link

LOS ANGELES: Henry Taylor

February 23 – March 30, 2013

Opening reception: Saturday, February 23, 6 – 8 PM

BLUM & POE

2727 South La Cienega Boulevard

Los Angeles, CA

Blum & Poe is very pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Henry Taylor. This exhibition marks Taylor's second solo exhibition with the gallery and continues his exploration of portrait painting, while delving deeper into the history of oppression, exposing realities of the so-called American dream. His portrait subjects typically consist of friends or historic figures, which are painted with an unmediated sense of spontaneity and happy accidents throughout.

In addition to his customary portraits, Taylor introduces anonymous farm workers captured from WPA-era photographs. A more deliberate hand is at work on these portraits, elevating what could be simple documentation to that of a religious or imperial icon. On the gallery floor will be rows of dirt intended to mimic freshly plowed fields and a stately dinner table with a chandelier hanging overhead. The juxtaposition of manual labor versus genteel living creates a charged atmosphere, recalling the history of black American labor, as well as the realities of all forms of blue-collar work.

In this exhibition Taylor returns to a mainstay of his practice, using readily available materials to create social commentary. He routinely scours the neighborhood surrounding his Chinatown studio for discarded items, repurposing them into installations imbued with memories of oppression and the abuses of authority. The overall impact effectively demonstrates the subjective nature of equality within the United States.

Henry Taylor (born in Oxnard, California, 1958) received his bachelor of arts from California Institute of the Arts and has had solo exhibitions at MOMA PS1, Santa Monica Museum of Art, and Studio Museum in Harlem. He has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Blues for Smoke, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Made in LA, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles; Human Nature: Contemporary Art from the Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; and 30 Americans, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL and North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC.

NEW YORK: Henry Taylor / UNTITLED

Image courtesy of UNTITLED.

March Forth

March 4 - April 22, 2012
Opening reception: March 4, 2012 - 6 to 8pm

UNTITLED

30 Orchard Street

New York, NY

UNTITLED is ferocious to present a new solo show of work by Henry Taylor. 

Remarkably prolific, Taylor began painting seriously at the California state hospital where he worked as a psychiatric nurse for ten years. While still in school, he developed a style that was both understated and nuanced and began working, more or less, compulsively, painting people he'd find on the street and becoming a fixture in downtown LA. Since then, his studio has had a fairly constant flow of friends, neighbors and strangers, all sitting for portraits. 

For his show at the gallery, Henry will install an African hut, a large-scale sculpture built in part from the miscellany stashed in his studio and inspired by a recent trip to Ethiopia. The piece is a hodgepodge of random and found objects ranging from clusters of Chinese brooms, a disrobed mannequin, and a taxidermied hyena. Made in the same spontaneous spirit as his paintings, the hut is a kind of carefully curated randomness, both a departure and expansion of his style. 

The exhibition highlights Henry’s recent movement beyond canvases, building upon his “African Jungle” made of broom sticks, painted detergent bottles and old furniture (with a few paintings buried inside as well) first shown at LA’s Blum & Poe gallery and currently on view at MoMA PS1, as part as the artist's mid-career retrospective. Above all, the new work is a strange social space (its main structure can fit about eight full-grown adults inside), a kind of extension of Henry’s studio that speaks volumes about its creator. It is calculated chaos, simultaneously jarring and welcoming.

Henry Taylor (born 1958, Oxnard, CA, lives and works in Los Angeles) studied painting at California Institute of Arts. He was included in 30 Americans, a survey of the most important African American artists of the last three decades organized by the Rubell Family Collection and recently on view at the Corcoran Museum of Arts in Washington DC. He has had solo shows in LA at Sister, Blum & Poe and Mesler & Hug and, in New York, at Rental Gallery, the Studio Museum in Harlem and, most recently, MoMA PS1.

View March Forth installation photos here.