Warning Shots Not Required: Henry Taylor Proves His Undeniable Genius at MoCA Los Angeles

text and photographs by Oliver Kupper

This is his house. This is his city. This is Henry’s world. In the earth-shattering career survey of Henry Taylor’s oeuvre at MOCA Grand Ave. in Los Angeles, the artist proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he is one of the most important painters of our generation. Organized thematically, not chronologically, B Side is a tragicomic traversal, a dissection of the artist’s prolific body of work, but also a glorious star-spangled journey into the heart of a racialized America. Like a Max Roach drum solo or a Duke Ellington intro, the survey is an abstract confession of genius in a collective of large, energized paint strokes. There are friends, lovers, family, and humanized portrayals of people living, or more so surviving, on Skid Row. There is Miles Davis and his wife Cicely Tyson outside Obama’s White House—a distinct psychological examination of a "post-racial" America. Black Americana as a speculative exercise in fictional temporalities—the notion of hanging on to a dream like a vertical rock cliff. There is Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, in full military regalia with the words ‘Tupac’ and ‘Coffee’—two cultural exports with distinctly colonial and revolutionary implications. There is track and fielder Carl Lewis long jumping past a white picket fence with a prison looming behind him and the word ‘gold’ written in large stenciled lettering. Indeed, a carceral foreboding looms over these paintings as a distinct soliloquy of Black life in America, and the thin blue line pierces through with horrifying consequences. In THE TIMES THAY AINT CHANGING, FAST ENOUGH! (2017), the killing of Philando Castile is captured in stark blocks of color: a body slumped over, arms clutching an invisible bullet wound, a twisted car seat, a white hand holding a 9mm glock. B Side also delivers a vast breadth of rarely seen works, like his sketches made during his ten-year stint working at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital where the likes of Charlie Parker and jazz pianist Phineas Newborn Jr. went to fight their addictions to heroin. There are also painted objects, like cigarettes, cereal boxes, and even a black typewriter case with the words: “I try to be write aint TRY’n to be WHITE.” In the end, you can never demand more, because Henry Taylor gives every part of himself. You are too stunned to flip the record over, so you let the stylus fall into the last groove where it crackles gently, romantically, to the edge of your reverie.

Henry Taylor: B Side is on view through April 30 at MOCA Grand Avenue

 
 

Henry Taylor's Inaugural Solo Exhibition @ Hauser & Wirth Somerset

Henry Taylor culls his cultural landscape at a vigorous pace, creating a language entirely his own from archival and immediate imagery, disparate material and memory. Through a process he describes as ‘hunting and gathering,’ Taylor transports us into imagined realities that interrogate the breadth of the human condition, social movements and political structures.

For his inaugural exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, the American artist has taken over all five galleries in Somerset to present a major body of sculptural work and paintings, evolving in unison across the spaces. Throughout his four-decade long career, Taylor has consistently and simultaneously both embraced and rejected the tenets of traditional painting as well as any formal label. He has amassed a staggering body of highly personal work rooted in the people and communities closest to him, often manifested alongside poignant historical or pop-cultural references. In preparation for the exhibition, Taylor extended and unraveled his studio practice within the galleries at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, followed by an artist residency at Hauser & Wirth Somerset this winter - energetically building, stacking and affixing a vast array of collected objects together to create a holistic record of his everyday routine and the materials that define them. With a guiding sense of human connection, Taylor layers reoccurring visual cues associated with his own personal experiences and broader cultural references that lead us through a multifaceted narrative in sculpture and painting.

Although his subjects are wildly diverse - family members, peers and acquaintances - Taylor’s ability to seek out the truest sense of a person and their sociocultural framework is evident throughout. This sharp focus has shifted inwards during the UK’s national lockdown with two new self-portraits. The first, a head and shoulder profile, depicts a regal-looking Taylor as Henry V and is a play on the artist’s childhood nickname of Henry VIII, since he is the youngest of eight children. The second is a full body image of Taylor in Somerset adorning pinstripe pyjamas and flanked by sheep, placing him firmly in his new rural environment.

Henry Taylor is available to view online now through June 6 and for will be open for in-person viewing by appointment starting April 13 @ Hauser & Wirth Somerset Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL