Bio

In recent years, Henry Taylor (b. 1958 Oxnard, California) has received much-deserved attention for his portrait paintings of friends and acquaintances as well as celebrities and sports figures. That practice has lately been complemented by evocative sculptures, mainly assemblages of found materials, drawing the problems of real life and figuration into the three-dimensional space of the body. Recent works such as It’s Like a Jungle (2011)—a large assortment of used objects, including boxes, crates, cinder blocks, electronics, and furniture—suggest the urban refuse that finds its way onto L.A.’s street corners or that might serve as furniture in downtown’s most provisional housing. A trip to Ethiopia informed Taylor’s reuse of detritus in the present installation, which incorporates totemic presences that add a kind of spiritual depth to the modernist project of ready-made sculpture but subvert that by always lingering a step away from garbage. Like his paintings, Taylor’s sculptures trouble high and low cultural markers, asking us to reevaluate our investments in each.