FROM SUGAR TO SHIT
14 October 2023 – 7 January 2024
Paris
Hauser & Wirth’s inaugural exhibition in Paris will debut new works by critically acclaimed Los Angeles artist Henry Taylor, whose major career survey arrives at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York on 4 October 2023 and will remain on view through 7 January 2024. Taylor’s exhibition in Paris will comprise a wide range of paintings and sculpture encompassing the remarkable breadth of his practice. Throughout his four-decade long career, Taylor has consistently and simultaneously embraced and rejected the tenets of traditional painting, as well as any formal label. Combining figurative, landscape and history painting, alongside drawing, installation and sculpture, Taylor’s vast body of highly personal work is rooted in the people and communities closest to him, often manifested together with poignant historical or pop-culture references. In this exhibition, with a guiding sense of human connection, Taylor leads us through a multifaceted narrative in sculpture and painting.
In the lead up to this show, Taylor extended his studio practice to Paris for a residency in the city during the months of June and July 2023. During this time, Taylor has drawn inspiration from the unparalleled array of historical art collections contained in the city, such as the Musée D’Orsay where he was surrounded by the work of French Impressionists, Expressionists and Fauvists who have inspired him since an early age. Taylor’s studied awareness of his art historical predecessors is continually prevalent throughout his work, having previously painted versions of works by Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Philip Guston, Gerhard Richter, David Hammons and Glenn Ligon, among others.
Henry Taylor’s imprint on the American cultural landscape comes from his disruption of tradition. While people figure prominently in Taylor’s work, he rejects the label of portraitist. Taylor’s chosen subjects are only one piece of the larger cultural narrative that they represent: his paintings reveal the forces at play, both individualistic and societal, that come to bear on his subject. The end result is not a mere idealized image, but a complete narrative of a person and his history. Taylor explains this pursuit of representational truth: ‘It’s about respect, because I respect these people. It’s a two-dimensional surface, but they are really three-dimensional beings.’[1]
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