Al Taylor Zeichnungen

"American artist Al Taylor, who was born in 1948, considered himself more of a painter and draftsman than a sculptor. His European breakthrough was triggered by a series of exhibitions in the early nineties. In barely thirty years, he produced an extraordinarily diverse range of very personal and self-willed works, which following his early death in 1999 have been put into new perspective. In addition to his three-dimensional works, Taylor's drawings are at the center of attention. His inspiration often came from the observation of banal objects and curious situations, and his works reflect his sensitivity to the bizarre and a deep humor which is based on the fact that often the most trivial occasions can be a vehicle to extremely "serious" experiments. Few artists of his generation had a similar range of expressive means, in which sensuality and discipline, energy and control are united."--BOOK JACKET.

The delicate Postminimalist sculptures and drawings of the American artist Al Taylor (1948-1999) were for a long time better known in Europe than in the U.S., despite Taylor's residing in New York. Laboring quietly from the mid-1980s until his premature death from cancer at the age of 51, Taylor made abstract drawings and sculptures derived from found materials that refresh both abstraction and Postminimalism with their gentle humor and lightness of touch. Working in a decade that favored less discreet gestures, Taylor never loomed large in the New York art world's consciousness (despite his brief tenure as a studio assistant to Robert Rauschenberg). Alongside an increasing number of exhibitions, this publication helps to remedy that oversight, providing a catalogue raisonn of Taylor's graphic works, thereby retrieving a previously little-known aspect of his oeuvre. Aside from the published prints, it also reproduces all of the artist's proofs and variants, which often differ significantly from the final versions.

Featuring nearly eighty drawings and pages from a dozen sketchbooks that span Al Taylor's entire career, this book documents the artist's important achievements as a draftsman. This book investigates important and illuminating aspects of Al Taylor's drawings, which numbered over five thousand at the time of his death. It includes a chronological survey of Taylor's drawings from the mid-1980s, when he abandoned painting in favor of sculpture and drawing, and highlights the combination of technical refinement, humor, and sensuousness that characterizes his works on paper. Stunning reproductions of the works, which were inspired by such ordinary things as tin cans, pet stains, and broomsticks, reveal the drawings' minute details, nuanced shading, and playfully agile pencil lines. Lively texts explore how the rich and complex visual sensibilities of Taylor's drawings resonate with that of late Renaissance and Baroque Old Masters. The book also examines Taylor's innovative approach to process and materials, such as photocopier toner, with its intense black, and the extreme white of correction fluid. Created with equal parts humor and technical virtuosity, and informed by scientific models as well as everyday minutiae, Al Taylor's magnificent drawings are meditations on form and structure that stand as testament to great draftsmanship. Published with the Morgan Library & Museum

Al Taylor (1949 1999) was an artist whose intimate view of the world was explored using any media available. Constantly observing whatever was around him he deftly abstracted simple objects and imagery into a unique body of work that is both complex and humorous. He worked as a painter and draftsman until the mid-1980s, when he began constructing three-dimensional pieces to Expand The pictorial plane. Taylor saw his sculptural constructions as spatial drawings that provide a multitude of views. Each work is an investigative mapping of his thoughts and perceptions across several dimensions that configure fluid spaces through the rhythmic movement of his compositions. The exhibition, Puddles brought together a comprehensive group of sixty-four of Taylor's Puddles drawings and six Hanging Puddles sculptures made between 1990 and 1992. The puddle sculptures hang freely in space: standing water becomes an event in three dimensions. In thin, black strips of hot-rolled steel, somewhat awkwardly bent, The hooks, loops, openings, and lines flow freely and with a playful ease through the space, attached To The ceiling with simply twisted wires. Seen from a distance, The sculptures might appear to be just lines finely drawn on the wall itself. Published on the occasion of the exhibition at Haunch of Venison, Zurich, January March 2006.

Al Taylor was an artist whose intimate view of the world was explored using any media available. Constantly observing whatever was around him, from pet stains on urban streets to styrofoam floats washed up on a Hawaiian beach, he deftly abstracted simple objects and imagery into a unique body of work that is both complex and humorous. Only 51 at the time of his death in 1999, the artist worked as a painter and draftsman until the mid-1980s, when he began constructing three-dimensional pieces to expand the pictorial plane. Approaching his three-dimensional work and drawing with the same whimsical intensity, he willfully dismissed any distinction between these mediums. For Taylor, his constructions are spatial drawings that provide a multitude of views. Each work is an investigative mapping of his thoughts and perceptions across several dimensions that configures fluid spaces through the rhythmic movement of his compositions.

Although Al Taylor began his career as a painter, in 1985 he devised an innovative approach that encompassed twodimensional drawings and three-dimensional objects. Taylor saw no distinction between his drawings and threedimensional works and referred to his constructions not as sculptures but as "drawings in space" or "drawing instruments". These objects were usually fashioned out of unconventional materials, and often incorporated humble and humorous elements. They offered multiple viewpoints and would subsequently form the basis of further explorations on paper. Rim Jobs and Sideffects presents two series, "Rim Jobs" (1995) and "Sideffects" (1995-97), which demonstrate Taylor's multi-dimensional compositions.

Having begun his studio practice as a painter and draftsman, in 1985 Al Taylor (1948-1999) devised a uniquely innovative approach to process and materials that seamlessly enveloped drawings and three-dimensional objects as he created compositions that were grounded in the formal concerns of painting. Taylor ultimately sought to expand the possibilities of vision in his search for new ways of experiencing and imagining space, and his multi-layered investigations of perception across variant dimensions provide the viewer with an insight into the artist's idiosyncratic thinking, his methodology, and his playful sense of humor. Published on the occasion of the artist’s 2015 exhibition at the gallery, this catalogue 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; as well as 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. The objects and drawings that comprise these series demonstrate Taylor’s relentless curiosity about the process of seeing—that is, how we see and what we see, which he systematically explored by applying a multitude of constantly shifting points of view. The artist’s investigations combined metaphor with seemingly incongruous materials and concepts in order to find new relationships between subject matter, space, and meaning. This fully illustrated publication will feature new scholarship on Taylor’s work by Mimi Thompson.