Henry Taylor B Side /anglais

Catalogue de l'exposition au MOCA, Los Angeles du 6 novembre 2022 au 30 avril 2023

Magnifique ouvrage sur le travail du plasticien Henry Taylor, surtout connu comme peintre à l'activité créatrice débordante, frénétique. Il se sert d'une multitude de supports et peint tout son entourage dans des scènes de vie quotidienne, mais aussi des athlètes, des politiciens, des sans-abris... 

Son art est décrit comme sensuel, empathique, plein d'amour, vibrant, pêchu, l'équivalent visuel du blues, avec un élan de regard critique sur la société.

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Surveying 30 years of Henry Taylor’s work in painting, sculpture and installation, this comprehensive monograph celebrates a Los Angeles artist widely appreciated for his unique aesthetic, social vision and freewheeling experimentation. Taylor’s portraits and allegorical tableaux—populated by friends, family members, strangers on the street, athletic stars and entertainers—display flashes of familiarity in their seemingly brash compositions, which nonetheless linger in the imagination with uncanny detail. In his paintings on cigarette packs, cereal boxes and other found supports, Taylor brings his primary medium into the realm of common culture. Similarly, the artist’s installations often recode the forms and symbolisms of found materials (bleach bottles, push brooms) to play upon art historical tropes and modernism’s appropriations of African or African American culture. Taken together, the various strands of Taylor’s practice display a deep observation of Black life in America at the turn of the century, while also inviting a humanist fellowship that pushes outward from the particular.

“I paint everyone, or I try to. I try to capture the moment I am with someone who could be my friend, a neighbor, a celebrity, or a homeless person.”