Al Taylor: Early Works
Publisher: Steidl / Zwirner & Wirth
Publish Date: 2008
Text by Robert Storr. Interview with the artist by Ulrich Loock
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.
Details
Publisher: Steidl / Zwirner & Wirth
Artist: Al Taylor
Contributors: Ulrich Loock, Robert Storr
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 9783865216366
Retail: $65
Designer: Matthew Polhamus
Printer: Steidl, Göttingen, Germany
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 9 x 11 1/4 in (22.9 x 28.6 cm)
Pages: 143
Reproductions: 78 color, 1 b&w
Artist and Contributors
Al Taylor
Although he began his studio practice as a painter, Al Taylor (1948–1999) devised a unique and innovative approach to process and materials that encompassed two-dimensional works on paper and three-dimensional objects. He sought to expand the possibilities of vision by exploring new ways of experiencing and imagining space. His sculptures, which he thought of as "tools for vision," were usually fashioned out of unconventional materials, often employing humble and sometimes humorous elements.
Ulrich Loock
Ulrich Loock was born in 1953 in Braunschweig, Germany. He was Director of Kunsthalle Bern from 1985–1997, Director of Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland from 1997–2001, and Deputy Director of Museu de Serralves, Porto, Portugal from 2003–2010. He currently lives and works in Berlin as an independent curator, art critic, and lecturer. He has curated numerous exhibitions of artists such as Michael Asher, Matthew Barney, Marlene Dumas, Robert Gober, Katharina Grosse, Eberhard Havekost, Maria Lassnig, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Gerhard Richter, Wilhelm Sasnal, Thomas Schu¨tte, Thomas Struth, Luc Tuymans, and Christopher Wool. Loock also wrote the essay for Al Taylor: Rim Jobs and Sideffects (2011), co-published by David Zwirner and Steidl.
Robert Storr
Robert Storr is an American artist, critic, and educator who was a curator, and then senior curator, of The Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Painting and Sculpture from 1990 to 2002 and from 2005 to 2007. He served as the first American-born director of the Venice Biennale. From 2002 to 2006, he was the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and then dean of the Yale School of Art from 2006 to 2016, where he remains as a professor of painting and printmaking. The exhibition he organized at David Zwirner in 2013 to celebrate the centenary of Ad Reinhardt was voted “Best Show in a Commercial Space in New York” by the US Art Critics Association.
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