Al Taylor: A / LOW / HA: The Hawaiian Works

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of sculptures, drawings, and prints by the American artist Al Taylor (1948–1999) at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York. Spanning the last decade of the artist’s career, the works on view focus on Taylor’s fascination with Hawaii—its scenic beauty, history, oceanic culture, and the daily lifestyle of the Hawaiian people. Taylor first traveled to Hawaii in 1987, working as an art handler for a hotel developer on Maui and then again on Kauai in 1988. These initial visits sparked the artist’s curiosity and became an important source of study and inspiration in his work over the ensuing years. Using his characteristic humor and deft draftsmanship, these works playfully examine ordinary objects such as plastic leis, broomsticks, and foam fishing net floats, and explore a range of the natural phenomena that he observed, including reflected sunlight and the flow patterns of ocean waves.

To celebrate his fiftieth birthday in 1998, Taylor visited Kauai and the big island of Hawaii. Upon his return—and inspired by his Hawaiian experience—the artist created an explosion of new drawings and sculptures, which, following his untimely death in 1999, would turn out to be his last works.

The exhibition at David Zwirner will coincide with The Drawings of Al Taylor, curated by Isabelle Dervaux at The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, on view from February 21 through September 13, 2020.

Image: Installation view, Al Taylor, A / LOW / HA: The Hawaiian Works, David Zwirner, New York, 2020

Location

537 West 20th Street New York

Dates

March 5—July 31, 2020

Opening Reception

Thursday, March 5, 6–8 PM

Artist

Al Taylor

Press Release

A / LOW / HA: The Hawaiian Works

“When travelling Taylor absorbed his environment, soaking up sound, color, patterns, and textures and chose elements
for his work that marked the place in some way.”
—Mimi Thompson, “First you turn on the power, then you can change the channel,”
in Al Taylor: Lures & Cures (exhibition catalogue), Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1999

Taylor in front of a lava dome at Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii, March 1998. Estate of Al Taylor archives

Left: Al Taylor, Bondage Duck #1, 1998. Right, Al Taylor, Bondage Duck #2, 1998

From August to October 1987, Taylor made his first trip to Maui; he also visited the island of Kauai, where he would return a year later. These visits mark the beginning of his fascination with the history, culture, and landscape of Hawaii.

“He and I were part of a crew of about fifty artists from all over the states who had been hired to install a lot of really bad art in some newly constructed Japanese-owned hotels on Maui,” Taylor’s friend Charles Yoder recalls. “I was sharing a two bedroom, seventh floor apartment with Al. It had a nice sized balcony looking northwest over the water towards Molokai and Lanai.

The first morning I got up at 5:30 and was shoveling eggs and slurping coffee when Al emerged. He mumbled ‘Mornin’’’ and took a cup of black coffee out to the balcony.

I watched as he lit his first Marlboro of the day, sat down, put a watercolor pad in his lap and started painting as the sun came up. Quick sketches, one right after another. The light changing, moment to moment. The wind was blowing strong. Another cigarette. Some black ink washes. Another coffee. Then he switched to watercolors. After an hour he came in, had a final coffee, finished dressing and we left for work.”

Al Taylor

Layson a Stick, 1989

Pencil, gouache, and ink on paper torn from spiral ring sketchbook

10 5/8 x 9 inches (27 x 22.9 cm)
Framed: 16 3/4 x 15 x 1 3/8 inches (42.5 x 38.1 x 3.5 cm)

Al Taylor

Layson a Stick, 1989

Wooden broomsticks with enamel paint, wire, and plastic leis

20 x 26 x 47 inches (50.8 x 66 x 119.4 cm)

“Hawaii occupied a special place in Taylor’s imagination...but he chose to see it from a perspective influenced by the Hawaiian people he had met and who befriended him during his visits.” —Michael Rooks, Curator’s Acknowledgments, in Al Taylor: What Are You Looking At? (exhibition catalogue), High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2018

Al Taylor

"Title Page" from Ten Common (Hawaiian Household) Objects, 1989

Line etching, spit bite aquatint, drypoint, and burnishing printed in black ink from one copper plate on Zerkall Bütten paper

19 3/8 x 14 inches (49.2 x 35.6 cm)
Framed: 21 1/2 x 16 1/8 inches (54.6 x 41 cm)

One of the earliest works on view, Taylor’s 1989 print portfolio Ten Common (Hawaiian Household) Objects developed from a series of drawings made following the artist’s initial visits to the islands. At once formal and evocative, these etchings present nearly abstracted representations of often overlooked, everyday items that he observed during his trips, including a window screen, a strip of fly paper, flip flops, and mosquito coils.

“The whole group of eleven etchings is characterized by an extreme degree of multileveled meaning…. In every detail, this portfolio occupies the level of a style in which precise observation, poetic transformation, allusion, underlying humor, and eros merge in manifold levels.”

Michael Semff, “Serious Games/The Graphic Art of Al Taylor,” in Al Taylor Prints: Catalogue Raisonné, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, 2013

Al Taylor

"Bottled Water" from Ten Common (Hawaiian Household) Objects, 1989

Line etching, spit bite aquatint, and drypoint printed in black ink from one copper plate on Zerkall Bütten paper

19 3/8 x 14 inches (49.2 x 35.6 cm)
Framed: 21 1/2 x 16 1/8 x 1 3/8 inches (54.6 x 41 x 3.5 cm)

Al Taylor

"Flypaper" from Ten Common (Hawaiian Household) Objects, 1989

Line etching, spit bite aquatint, drypoint, and polishing printed in black ink from one copper plate on Zerkall Bütten paper

19 3/8 x 14 inches (49.2 x 35.6 cm)
Framed: 21 1/2 x 16 1/8 x 1 3/8 inches (54.6 x 41 x 3.5 cm)

“Taylor began to collect fishing floats that had washed up on the beach—beautiful and slightly ratty, pastel foam ovals. These early floats ended-up as small totems, one float atop a bamboo stake on a base—variations of elongated African masks that have long interested him.”
—Mimi Thompson, “First you turn on the power, then you can change the channel”, 1999

Al Taylor

Bondage Duck #3, 1998

Foamed plastic fishing net floats, rubber bands, latex coating, acrylic mica mortar and bamboo garden stake mounted in sand-filled rusted beer can

17 1/4 x 3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches (43.8 x 9.5 x 14 cm)

Al Taylor

Untitled, 1988

Drypoint and machine grinding printed in black ink from one copper plate, with hand-punched holes, on Arches paper with hand additions in watercolor

Sheet size: 17 7/8 x 14 7/8 inches (45.4 x 37.8 cm)
Framed: 22 x 19 inches (55.9 x 48.3 cm)

During his trip to Kauai in the spring of 1998, Taylor collected dozens of weathered foam floats that had broken free from fishing nets, which he found washed up on the beach. The artist came back to New York carrying several suitcases full of the lozenge-shaped floats, which soon became a central motif in his Hawaiian imagery and late sculptures.

Among these works are the enigmatic and endearing Bondage Duck sculptures and painterly portraits that Taylor playfully titled with suggestive innuendo. In this series, the artist reconfigured the elliptical shape of the floats by slicing them in half, gluing them together at a ninety-degree angle, and then literally binding them with multi-colored rubber bands. The reassembled floats assume facial features that simultaneously elicit contrasting expressions both comical and forlorn. Mounted on bamboo garden stakes, the totemic presence of Taylor’s Bondage Ducks conjures up Hawaiian Tiki god figures, African Dogon masks, and Donald Duck.

Al Taylor

Fish Floats (Council), 1998

Pencil, graphite, and China marker grease pencil on paper

13 x 17 1/8 inches (33 x 43.5 cm)
Framed: 19 3/4 x 24 inches (50.2 x 61 cm)

Al Taylor

Bondage Duck, 1998

Pencil, graphite, ink, acrylic mica mortar, China marker grease pencil, and wax crayon on paper

20 1/16 x 14 3/4 inches (51 x 37.5 cm)
Framed: 26 5/8 x 21 3/8 inches (67.6 x 54.3 cm)

Al Taylor

Bondage Duck #4, 1998–1999

Foamed plastic fishing net floats, rubber bands, latex coating, plastic leis, and bamboo garden stake with acrylic mica mortar mounted on steel base

26 x 6 3/8 x 6 1/2 inches (66 x 16.2 x 16.5 cm)

Al Taylor

Layson a Stick, c. 1992-1993

Wooden broomsticks with enamel paint, plastic leis, aluminum dowel rod, and wire

46 1/2 x 28 1/2 x 28 3/4 inches (118.1 x 72.4 x 73 cm)

The drawings and sculptures in Taylor’s Layson a Stick series, which he worked on intermittently in the late 1980s and early 1990s, reveal the artist’s interest in rethinking how we see found objects and demonstrate his precise use of color as well as his fascination with language, phonetics, and wordplay. The sculptures belong to a larger body of works from 1985 to 1995 that incorporate segments of factory-painted broomsticks the artist had scavenged from the street trash in New York City. Here, Taylor drapes the broomsticks, which jut out from the wall into the space of the viewer, with colorful plastic leis, creating a lewd visual pun.

In 1998, to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, Taylor and his wife Debbie travelled to the big island of Hawaii for the first time. The trip resulted in an explosion of new work after his return to New York. “After spending much of 1997 working in Europe, I made a conscious effort for 1998 to be a year in which I would work in my studio and concentrate on a body of coherent work that might solidify my past experiments.” —Al Taylor, unpublished statement, September 1998

Intrigued by ancient Polynesian navigational techniques based on a cognitive method of visualizing travel across the Pacific by observing the patterns of ocean swells to read the scale and direction of waves, Taylor began studying the movements of the ocean. In his Wave Theory drawings, the artist maps out his theoretical observations of the ebb and flow of wave swells, sometimes using a Chinese grid paper to chart the movement of the waves in sparse compositions of black ink lines and dots. As Isabelle Dervaux observes, “The scientific model allowed Taylor to draw seascapes without the emotional trappings of such a typically romantic subject.”

In the related Floaters group of drawings, the artist applied multiple tonal layers of rich black washes to render the undulating movement of water above and beneath the surface of the ocean. Images of “surfing” foam floats appear almost fish-like as they are carried by the power of Taylor’s imagined waves. As Mimi Thompson describes these works, “… somehow the entire fullness of the swells emerge; the viewer can feel the movement and structure of the sea.”

Isabelle Dervaux, “A Painter’s Drawings,” in The Drawings of Al Taylor (exhibition catalogue), The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 2020

Mimi Thompson, “First you turn on the power, then you can change the channel,” 1999

Al Taylor

Fish Float, 1998

Pencil, ink, and acrylic mica mortar on paper

23 5/8 x 18 inches (60 x 45.7 cm)
Framed: 30 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches (77.5 x 62.2 cm)

Al Taylor

Untitled (Wave Theory), 1998

Ink and acrylic mica mortar on Chinese graph paper collaged to paper

16 x 21 3/4 inches (40.6 x 55.3 cm)
Framed: 21 11/16 x 27 7/16 inches (55.1 x 69.7 cm)

Al Taylor

Untitled (Wave Theory with Floaters), 1998

Ink and acrylic mica mortar on Chinese graph paper collaged to paper

17 7/8 x 20 5/8 inches (45.4 x 52.4 cm)
Framed: 24 3/4 x 27 1/4 inches (62.9 x 69.2 cm)

“The medium of this oeuvre is fluids. While the focus earlier was on ‘dripping, pissing, spraying,’ it is now on ‘floating,’ on going along with the endlessly rolling swell.” —Ulrich Loock, "Return to Africa", in Al Taylor: Rim Jobs and Sideffects (exhibition catalogue), David Zwirner, New York, 2011

Al Taylor

Waxed, 1998

Foamed plastic fishing net floats, ink, acrylic mica mortar and bamboo garden stakes on wood base with paint primer and wax

16 1/4 x 13 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches (41.3 x 34.3 x 21.6 cm)

Al Taylor

Wave Theory with Fish Floats (Rough Side), 1998

Graphite, gouache, ink, and acrylic mica mortar on paper

13 7/8 x 22 3/4 inches (35.2 x 57.8 cm)
Framed: 20 5/8 x 29 1/4 inches (52.4 x 74.3 cm)

Al Taylor, (3 2 4 1 4 2 3): Counting Without Riggers, 1998
Foamed plastic fishing net floats, bamboo garden stakes, and acrylic mica mortar, 9 x 35 x 10 1/2 inches (22.9 x 88.9 x 26.7 cm)

Taylor’s love of Hawaiian culture included a fascination with outrigger canoes—the transport vessels sailed across the Pacific by early Polynesian explorers and still used today in Hawaii. The sculptures in the artist’s Counting Without Riggers series again recycles the beachcombed fishing-net floats, which this time are employed individually—some painted in vibrant colors—and in stacks that are interconnected with bamboo garden stakes. These works with their narrow, elongated forms and delicately balanced extended “arms,” sometimes angled and suggesting motion, evoke outrigger canoes maneuvering the waves with their stabilizing spars. By contrast, a few of the works in this group—simply titled Without Riggers, seem to contradict the stability of the vessels and, as Lawrence Rinder describes, “These compositions … are markedly unbalanced, resembling less a stabilizing device than the aftermath of a nautical accident.” The artist typically offers variable conflations of meaning with his play of words in the title. When spoken out loud Counting Without Riggers also sounds like “counting with outriggers” as well as “counting without rigor.” The drawings in this series underscore Taylor’s mastery as a colorist and his meticulous skill at rendering three dimensions in a two-dimensional format.

Lawrence Rinder, “Looking Good” in Al Taylor, What Are You Looking At? (exhibition catalogue), High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2018

Al Taylor

Untitled (Without Riggers), c. 1998-1999

Graphite, gouache, ink, acrylic paint, and acrylic mica mortar on Arches Aquarelle paper

30 1/8 x 22 5/8 inches (76.5 x 57.5 cm)
Framed: 37 x 29 3/8 inches (94 x 74.6 cm)

Al Taylor

Floaters (Pill Heads), 1998

Foamed plastic fishing net floats, acrylic paint, bamboo garden stakes, acrylic mica mortar, and pencil on Formica laminate with wood base mounted on a plastic milk crate

28 1/2 x 24 1/2 x 31 inches (72.4 x 62.2 x 78.7 cm)

One of Taylor’s most painterly groups of work on paper, the Rat Guards series was prompted by observing the reflection of sunlight on bands of sheet metal wrapped around palm tree trunks to prevent Hawaiian jungle rats from climbing up to pilfer coconuts. Encompassing drawings in bold black ink and gouache as well as compositions in sensuous colors of acrylic often mixed with luminescent mica mortar, Taylor’s Rat Guards hark back to his abstract geometric paintings of the 1970s. At times seeming to bend and wave in the breeze and at others standing erect and still, the depth of field and gestural brushwork in these attenuated tree forms elucidate the artist’s lifelong quest to expand the possibilities of vision by exploring meaning and finding new ways to experience space. Taylor’s commitment to painting is unobscured in these works with their formal, yet abstracted, realism and compositional investigation of spatial relationships. As John Yau asserts, “… I think Taylor recognized that his drawings were as much about painting as were his sculptures (even if he declined to define the latter as such), and that they were crucial to his desire to open painting back up to the world, to the ordinary and mundane, while keeping abstract.”

John Yau, “Interesting Phenomenon,” in Al Taylor: Early Paintings (exhibition catalogue), David Zwirner, New York, 2017

Al Taylor

Rat Guards, 1998

Ink, acrylic paint, and acrylic mica mortar on paper

23 x 14 5/8 inches (58.4 x 37.2 cm)
Framed: 29 7/8 x 21 1/8 inches (75.9 x 53.7 cm)

Al Taylor

Rat Guards, 1998

Pencil, gouache, acrylic paint, and acrylic mica mortar on paper

23 x 16 inches (58.4 x 40.6 cm)
Framed: 29 3/4 x 22 3/4 x 1 1/2 inches (75.6 x 57.8 x 3.8 cm)

Al Taylor

Rat Guard, 1998

Pencil, graphite, ink, gouache, and acrylic mica mortar on paper

22 3/16 x 16 1/16 inches (56.4 x 40.8 cm)
Framed: 29 x 22 3/4 inches (73.7 x 57.8 cm)

“All of this work done after absorbing the atmosphere of Hawaii brings Taylor’s investigations to a new level….the interlocking movement in the Hawaiian series—the Floater, Rat Guard, Wave Theory, Bondage Duck, and Outrigger drawings and sculpture—show Taylor combining elements of his past work with a sprung look at both color and the physics of how form is created. Encircled by water, islands have a big reflector surrounding them, and this brightness entered Taylor’s work. The air, sea, vegetation, and mythology of Hawaii told him stories he understood. Flat open to all messages, Taylor made new work that is fluid and densely felt, but still cutting and funny…. ART meant nothing to him—art and life meant everything.”
—Mimi Thompson, “First you turn on the power, then you can change the channel,” 1999

Installation view of the exhibition A / LOW / HA: The Hawaiian Works, at David Zwirner New York, dated 5 March through 18 April 2020.

Al Taylor

Untitled (for Doug Britt), 1998

Foamed plastic fishing net floats, styrofoam, acrylic mica mortar and bamboo garden stakes

9 x 21 x 11 3/4 inches (22.9 x 53.3 x 29.8 cm)

Al Taylor

Fish Floats (Council), 1998

Pencil, graphite, and China marker grease pencil on paper

13 x 17 1/8 inches (33 x 43.5 cm)
Framed: 19 3/4 x 24 inches (50.2 x 61 cm)

Al Taylor

Layson a Stick (Blue Balls), 1992

Wooden broomsticks with enamel paint, wire, and plastic leis

35 1/2 x 28 x 39 1/4 inches (90.2 x 71.1 x 99.7 cm)