312-944-4340

Fraser Taylor

December 26, 2007
For Immediate Release
Contact: John Brunetti, Director
312.944.4340
john@alfedenagallery.com

Scottish artist’s linear paintings and sculptures examine the various borders,

both actual and conceptual, that define culture, race and the body.

Fraser Taylor: compound

January 4 – February 2, 2008

Chicago---Alfedena Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Scottish artist Fraser Taylor, titled compound, from January 4 – February 2, 2008. This is the artist’s first solo show at Alfedena Gallery.  A reception for the artist will be held on Friday, January 4, 5:00-8:00 p.m. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Fraser Taylor explores the complicated vocabulary of modern abstraction through a variety of processes that are indebted to Arte Povera and its artists’ use of prosaic materials to express deeply felt emotional responses to an individual’s condition as shaped by socio-political events. Taylor’s background in textile design (he was a founding member of The Cloth, 1983-1987, an interdisciplinary design studio) informed his early tactile abstractions whose dense surfaces were built up from his discarded garments, fusing body and landscape into impenetrable tar-like masses evoking the complex interrelationship of identity shaped through external forms – be they clothing or landscape.  

The Scotland-inspired island-shapes of Taylor’s previous paintings and drawings have been replaced in compound with irregular, rectilinear outlines informed by Chicago’s artificial boundaries --- fences, expressways, bridges, El tracks, construction barricades --- that carve out spaces that define individuals by where they can and cannot pass. Since moving to Chicago in 2001, Taylor has palpably noticed that the flat Midwestern terrain of Chicago, in contrast to the hilly terrain of his native Scotland, encourages the erection of a plethora of manmade perimeters that carry a psychological tension – racial, cultural, political -- that extends beyond their utilitarian function.  

As with his earlier series of works, drawing is at the core of Taylor’s practice. Fluid linear sketches of the walled off areas of land defined by construction sites provided the starting point for oil on canvas paintings in which white contours are scraped from tactile black backgrounds. Black remains a signature element in Taylor’s current paintings (only one painting out of thirteen has a red field) resembling dark earthen layers in which previous lines of demarcation have been buried numerous times over. Occasionally a pale yellow will tint a strange nodule whose identity (Is it a building? Is it a shack? Is it a slab of forgotten concrete?) is elusive. The quirky compositions of these gestural, ersatz blueprints reflect an elastic urban grid responding to the human imperfections of its inhabitants. Through the urgency of his scraped contours, which convey the halting rhythms of painter Cy Twombly’s graffiti-influenced mark making, Taylor creates visual mappings of passionate urgency that record the unglamorous architectural footprint which reveals more about what a city is than its most famous landmarks.

Taylor’s sculptures created for compound are made from everyday materials found discarded on the street – wire, wood, yarn, cloth, metal, cardboard – and are fashioned into forms that have the appearance of either being under construction or demolition. Painted in his signature black these fragile works sit on low pedestals and their circular forms recall his earlier island-inspired works. But the asymmetrical lattice structures of these new works eschew the isolation of the earlier works through a provocative use of negative space which calls attention to gaps in the urban infrastructure, the irregular openings between a concrete pillar and a piece of metal fencing that doesn’t quite close, which provide illicit points of entry into spaces and worlds not meant to be easily accessed.

Accompanying the opening of compound is a commissioned sound design piece by Nicholas O’Brien, titled, Slaney. Slaney consists of combined field recordings with digitally generated/manipulated sound synthesis. This work provides an ambient landscape of restraint and reflection for the work of Fraser Taylor’s presented in compound.

Fraser Taylor (b. United Kingdom, 1960) earned a M.A. in 1983 from the Royal College of Art, London, England and a BA in 1981 from the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Scotland. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in London, Glasgow, Paris, Tokyo, Sydney, San Francisco and Chicago as well as numerous international group shows. His work is in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum London and the corporate collections of Microsoft, San Francisco, S.G. Warburg & Co., Ltd., London, Bank of China, London, Sun Oil, London. His work has been reviewed in the Sunday Telegraph, The Times, ID, Newsweek, The Standard, The Japan Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and New City. He is currently on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago teaching in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies. He lives and works in Chicago.

Alfedena Gallery is located at 434 W. Ontario in Chicago. Gallery hours: Tuesday – Friday, 10 am-6 pm; Saturday 10 am-5pm; Monday by appointment. For more information contact gallery director John Brunetti, 312.944.4340, john@alfedenagallery.com. To view images of the exhibition visit the web site, www.alfedenagallery.com.

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