Edited with text by Allison Kemmerer. Text by Naomi Fry, Lynne Tillman.
The first book on Alison Elizabeth Taylor, known for her daring fusion of wood inlay technique with gritty, dystopian scenes of deserts, casinos and cocktail lounges
Repudiating distinctions between craft and high art, and transcending both marquetry (wood inlay) and painting, the meticulously crafted works of Alison Elizabeth Taylor are as much about seeing as they are about making. Juxtaposing the over-the-top connotations of this ancient craft with dystopian images of blighted desert landscapes, anonymous subdivisions, glitzy casinos and seedy cocktail lounges, Taylor creates a tension between surface and subject, appearance and reality. The splendor of the shellacked wood invites us to consider the innate humanity of marginalized subjects we might otherwise overlook as well as the often-ignored impact of a boom-and-bust economy on American life and culture. Featuring insightful essays by leading curators and writers, this fully illustrated publication traces the evolution of the artist’s work from early paintings that explore space, line, color and form within the limited palette afforded by the grains and tones of natural woods to vividly colored “hybrids” that layer marquetry, paint and photographic imagery, to brand-new and increasingly complex works inspired by the resilience of the artist’s urban neighborhood and community during the pandemic. Raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, Alison Elizabeth Taylor (born 1972) received her MFA from the Graduate School of the Arts, Columbia University in 2005. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the world. In 2009, she received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and the Smithsonian's Artist Research Fellowship Program Award. Taylor lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
"Fire Science" (2019) is reproduced from 'Alison Elizabeth Taylor: The Sum of It.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Brooklyn Rail
Jason Rosenfeld
There is a buoyancy here, a recognition of American life in all its vapidity, voraciousness, and treasured vitality.
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Tuesday, October 11 from 6:30–8:30 PM, James Cohan gallery presents the launch of Alison Elizabeth Taylor: The Sum of It—the first comprehensive monograph on the artist—published by DelMonico Books | D.A.P. and Addison Gallery on the occasion of her upcoming traveling mid-career survey. Essayists Naomi Fry and Lynne Tillman will read from the book, followed by a signing. continue to blog
Featured spreads are from new release Alison Elizabeth Taylor: The Sum of It. Published to accompany the exhibition opening October 15 at Des Moines Art Center (en route to the Addison Gallery), this is the first major monograph on the rising artist whose intricate, even classical, inlaid-wood paintings paradoxically depict gritty scenes of real life, down in the trenches. "Taylor’s approach to painting appears unlimited in its scope, from abstractions to scenes of daily life, landscapes and interiors, to fantasy and portraiture," Lynne Tillman writes. "She discovered materials that mattered to her, that elicited uncanny realities, making the familiar unfamiliar by incorporating what isn’t commonly there—the unreality of lived reality, the genuine oddness of how things are, how they look, and what could be there. She paints fantasies, dreams, wishes as inherent interiors. Ultimately, Taylor’s depictions also problematize the nature of painting and naturalness itself. The questions that arise from art, thoughts it provokes, associations viewers draw from it, are its answers—how it is seen in the present. Taylor’s art responds to our contemporary moment, contentious, divided, pieces that do and don’t fit together, and looking at her work, I think about the fragility of personality, divided identities, and how the everyday entails the effort to get oneself together." continue to blog
Published by DelMonico Books/Addison Gallery. Edited with text by Allison Kemmerer. Text by Naomi Fry, Lynne Tillman.
The first book on Alison Elizabeth Taylor, known for her daring fusion of wood inlay technique with gritty, dystopian scenes of deserts, casinos and cocktail lounges
Repudiating distinctions between craft and high art, and transcending both marquetry (wood inlay) and painting, the meticulously crafted works of Alison Elizabeth Taylor are as much about seeing as they are about making. Juxtaposing the over-the-top connotations of this ancient craft with dystopian images of blighted desert landscapes, anonymous subdivisions, glitzy casinos and seedy cocktail lounges, Taylor creates a tension between surface and subject, appearance and reality. The splendor of the shellacked wood invites us to consider the innate humanity of marginalized subjects we might otherwise overlook as well as the often-ignored impact of a boom-and-bust economy on American life and culture.
Featuring insightful essays by leading curators and writers, this fully illustrated publication traces the evolution of the artist’s work from early paintings that explore space, line, color and form within the limited palette afforded by the grains and tones of natural woods to vividly colored “hybrids” that layer marquetry, paint and photographic imagery, to brand-new and increasingly complex works inspired by the resilience of the artist’s urban neighborhood and community during the pandemic.
Raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, Alison Elizabeth Taylor (born 1972) received her MFA from the Graduate School of the Arts, Columbia University in 2005. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the world. In 2009, she received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and the Smithsonian's Artist Research Fellowship Program Award. Taylor lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
