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The gallery Web site claims that Taylor possess a “spontaneous, obsessive and near pathological need to communicate his ideas in the medium best suited to express them.” His fecundity is on ample display: sixty-four works total, with more possibly on the way. While Taylor’s first solo exhibit at the gallery falls short on overall total coherence, its fun lies in exploring the connections between pieces. In one drawing, branches prop up a Trans Am holding a paint bucket. A real branch props up a Corvette hood in the makeshift lean-to installation “The Spirit”; the bucket reappears in “Tru-Test,” a paint ad turned upside down and re-contextualized through the addition of Lichtenstein-esque text. The broken board in one painting echoes the sculpture “Mingus,” in which a paddle-shaped board is bent back into a threatening curve by a winch. Many pieces indulge in 1950s and 1960s glamour: black marker cartoons drawn over pinups, and assemblages that include a .38 Magnum, a plywood Telecaster and an orange Eames chair. Prominently displayed are twenty-four fashion ads transformed through a Polish paper-cutting technique, Wycinanki, into symmetrical mutant plant shapes; across the way, cutout letters spell out “We’re Fucked.”
(A D Jameson) Through November 24 at LINDA WARREN GALLERY
Visual Art Culture of Chicago and Beyond
