Katherine Taylor: New Sculptures

Press Release

September 11 – October 18, 2014Skoto Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new sculpture by the American-born sculptor Katherine Taylor. This is her first solo show at the gallery. The artist will be present at the reception on Thursday, September 11, 6-8pm.The eight sculptures in this exhibition comprise the artist?s complete work from the past year. In each one, she offers a visual fragment of the familiar: a turtle?s shell, a mandarin orange, parts of an elephant?s body. Rather than the textures expected from such representation, the surface texture put forward in each is instead that of tree bark, a pattern that the artist pulls directly from its source in nature. Using silicone molds, she takes impressions of bark, which she shapes and casts in bronze, stainless steel, and aluminum. Katherine Taylor attaches great importance to the process of art-making and to the way this process and the logic of her material itself dictates the outcome of her artistic endeavors.The power in Katherine Taylor?s sculptures lie in their indeterminate nature as animal-botanical hybrids. Her practice of swapping plant textures for their animal counterparts creates a subtle and uncanny mimicry that results in sculptures appearing to be in a state of constant flux; a strange back-and-forth that gives the viewer what the artist calls a sense of ?visual refreshment.? She explores the possibilities of her materials and acts upon them within their natural confines as she strives to create work that reveals the true nature of the materials that are processed. The tactility she manages to convey is deeply moving and encourages us to deepen our consciousness of perception. Her work emphasizes profound engagement of the object with the viewer in time and space.Katherine Taylor?s large-scale drawings from the Elephant and Zebra series are remarkable both for their loose almost frantic aesthetic and vigor that add a visceral quality to the exhibition. She employs a keen ability to subvert or manipulate conventions of drawing as a physical object with an awareness of the crucial role that the constant process of thinking and rethinking, acting and reacting plays in the creative process. Though her drawings functions independently from her sculptures, they are charged throughout by the tension that arise when seemingly irreconcilable opposites are fused as the figures and structures appear to be made of geometric sculptural forms. The directness of her drawings in strong black and gray lines combined with markers evinces deep sensitivity to light and shadow, volume and space as well as harmony and dissonance.Katherine Taylor was born 1974. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College in 1997 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of Melbourne in Australia in 2005 She has over the years consistently remained true to an artistic vision that is firmly rooted in the fissure between the natural world and the world of imagination. She divides her time between Houston, New York, and Eibar in Northern Spain. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She is in several public and private collections in the US and abroad.