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8/1/2015

Two Exhibitions

David Zwirner, New York

Al Taylor

David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of drawings and three-dimensional constructions by Al Taylor, the artist’s fifth solo show at the gallery. On view at our 537 West 20th Street space, the exhibition will present 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; and 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.

In the fleid and lyrical drawings and constructions on view from Taylor’s Pet Stains and Puddles series, the artist used his observations of everyday street puddles and pavement stains as a jumping-off point to explore states of liquidity altered by the passage of time. To construct the three-dimensional works he collectively titled Pet Stain Removal Devices, Taylor utilized Plexiglas as a painting surface (conjoined in tiers on wood blocks or suspended from wires), which allowed him to play with the space occupied by the constructions and focus on the illusionary fracturing or spreading of opaque paint seen through the transparent planes. By providing multiple vantage points, the trails of paint applied to each plane sometimes appear to be continuous, and at other times, broken.

In Elape Time (1990), the artist theoretically measures how long a liquid spill might “stretch” given a certain force and the diverting effects of gravity, while Taylor’s Endless Puddle (1990) humorously poses the possibility of an infinity loop in which a puddle might endlessly circulate. The dedication of another work from 1990, Black Piece (for Etienné-Jules Marey), reflects the artist’s fascination with the sequential steps involved in a single movement, unseen by the naked eye, but revealed in the time-lapse photography of Marey, the French physiologist who invented a method of producing a series of successive images of a moving body on the same negative in the late nineteenth century. Also reflected in this group of works is Taylor’s acknowledged interest in Chinese scroll painting, in which the scenes depicted unfold gradually as the viewer walks along the painting’s length, thus demanding a constantly shifting viewpoint.

In 1992, when asked by Ulrich Loock about the relationship of his work to the viewer, Taylor responded, “If somebody… see[s] a bunch of Plexiglas with paint poured on it, what are they going to think? What I want them to see is levitation, literally. I am trying to find a state of suspended belief with this work, something akin to Japanese Noh Theater. If a viewer realizes that they are looking at drawings of levitated urine stains they might laugh, but when they leave the exhibition and they come across a dog piss stain on the street they might approach it differently. Art should give you a new perception, new ways of seeing life. Is how they see it the artist’s decision or the viewer’s choice or a combination of both? I don’t really know, but the pet stain works are just focusing exercises.”1

Taylor traveled to Odense, Denmark in November 1997 with exploratory drawings in hand, ready to create new work “on the spot” for his solo exhibition Full Gospel Neckless at Galleri Tommy Lund. Utilizing the Lund gallery as his studio, the artist composed six three-dimensional works using industrial plastic pipes and tubes, which he had scavenged locally from Danish construction sites, and colorful plastic-coated telephone cable that was acquired through the bartering skills of his art dealer. The exhibition at David Zwirner marks the first time that all six works will be seen together since their initial showing in Denmark.

In the Full Gospel Neckless series, Taylor configured circles within circles by “stringing” multiple PE and PVC pipes on circulating rings of cable that seem to track time as they travel through and sometimes over the tubes. The perception of linked movement conjured by his use of wire as both support and fluid drawing lines contradicts the static nature of the plastic pipes. In an unpublished statement from 1997, the artist notes, “Most of the material that I have been cutting for a while is round tubes, rods, dowels, etc. The reason for this must be that round things don’t have a traditional edge: they look pretty much the same from a lot of different angles. With tubes, there is also a definite inside and outside. What can I do about that?

With these works, Taylor characteristically isolated found and ordinarily overlooked objects, transformed them through his playful manipulation in an art context, and reoriented them to be viewed for their form rather than their function. The artist also typically employed linguistic twists and turns with his series title and individual subtitles, for example Full Gospel Neckless (Dog Act) and Full Gospel Neckless (Pipe Bomb), that leave the beginnings and endings of their storytelling open to interpretation. As described by Mimi Thompson, “Taylor’s joking intellect… [and his] interest in metaphor, anagrams and puns give [his] work a richness and liveliness that recalls the complexities of setting words to music. The visual rhythm of the line and color paired with the words (usually chosen for their multiple meanings) sets up a syncopated thought pattern for the viewer.” In addition to the three-dimensional works on view from the series, Taylor’s facility as a draftsman is revealed in an array of works on paper that run the gamut from still lifes to pure abstraction.

The objects and drawings on view in Pet Stains, Puddles, and Full Gospel Neckless 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. Simply put by Taylor: “Curiosity is the spark, intentions are the fuel, art is the vehicle and the artist is the driver, you are the road; I hope that these tires hold out.

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Jan Schoonhoven

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Jan Schoonhoven (1914–1994) at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location. The show will feature an extensive group of the artist’s sculptural wall reliefs and works on paper from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s in what will be the first significant presentation of the artist’s work in America in over a decade.

Regarded as one of the most important Dutch artists of the late twentieth century, Schoonhoven is recognized for his innovative and systematic investigations into light, form, and volume. Despite spending the majority of his life in Delft, the Netherlands, where he worked from 1946 to 1979 as a civil servant for the Dutch Postal Service, Schoonhoven rose to artistic prominence as an active and influential member of the international avant garde. Beginning in the 1950s, he played a central role in the Nederlandse Informele Groep (Netherlandish Informal Group) and the Nul-groep (Nul Group)—which were affiliated with the European Informel movement and the ZERO Group respectively. Rejecting illusionism and subjective expression, these artists shared a collective interest in exploring the essential, objective forms and properties of art. Schoonhoven in particular developed a highly unique body of work that centered on a sustained investigation of serial abstraction, the monochrome, and the grid. In their carefully structured yet sensitively rendered forms, the artist’s works have been fittingly described as “cool, strictly ordered, [and] well considered… but also familiar, humane, and intimate.”1

Providing a comprehensive overview of the development of Schoonhoven’s sculptural wall reliefs, the exhibition will trace their evolution from the earliest iterations to the most iconic and mature examples. While Schoonhoven began his artistic career making colorful drawings inspired primarily by the work of Paul Klee, he established his own singular artistic vocabulary in the late 1950s, when he began to develop his technique for making reliefs. Gradually expanding his compositions into three dimensions, Schoonhoven utilized cardboard and papier-mâché to lend depth, volume, and dynamic variations in light and shadow to his abstractions. The exhibition will include Motel, 1956, a prime example of the artist’s initial transition from two- to three-dimensionality. Within a few years, the artist’s forms became increasingly experimental and chance-based, as in his constructions détruites, or “destroyed structures”—cardboard reliefs that he demolished and subsequently remodeled with papier-mâché, two examples of which, R60-10 and R60-21, both 1960, will be included.

Pivotal to the artist’s oeuvre was his shift in 1960 to the employment of white monochrome surfaces and geometric, grid-based compositions, represented in the exhibition by works including Relief, 1964; 48 Squares, 1965; 2 Richtingen Om en Om (2 Directions On and On), 1967; as well as R-70.28, 1970 (collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York). The artist would go on to expand his production to larger serial reliefs such as R72-26, 1972, and R74-7, 1974, that reflect the apex of his production and his persistent fascination with the image-forming characteristics of light and shadow.

Concurrent and related to the production of his reliefs, Schoonhoven created a large number of works on paper including drawings in pen and ink as well as prints. Included here are iconic drawings such as Hatching in Four Directions, 1966; T71- 39, 1971; and a suite of five drawings from 1971 (collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York), which, like his reliefs, are characterized by subtle marks or geometric units that are distributed evenly over the surface of a white page. These and other works on paper make clear Schoonhoven’s ongoing interest in the simple repetition of form and the nuanced play of light and dark.

The gallery’s presentation expands upon the exhibition, ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s, on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, through January 7, 2015, which provides a window into Schoonhoven’s position as a seminal figure of the twentieth-century European avant garde.

On the occasion of the exhibition, David Zwirner Books will publish an extensive catalogue that will include new scholarship by Antoon Melissen, one of the foremost authorities on Schoonhoven’s work. Together with David Zwirner Director David Leiber, Melissen will lead a walkthrough of the gallery’s exhibition on January 9. Additionally, related to his writing on Schoonhoven, as well as to his scholarly contribution to the Guggenheim Museum’s ZERO show, Melissen will present his research at the forthcoming Guggenheim Museum program, ZEROgraphy: Mapping the ZERO network, 1957–67, on January 7. Please visit the museum’s website for more information

Press Contact:
Kim Donica +1 212 727 2070 kim@davidzwirner.com

Opening: Friday, January 9, 6 – 8 PM

David Zwirner
537 W 20th Street
Tue - Sat 10am to 6pm

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