ExhibitionsAl Taylor, What Are You Looking At?
Past Exhibition

Al Taylor, What Are You Looking At?

November 17, 2017 – March 18, 2018

The High Museum of Art is organizing the first museum survey in the United States to explore the career of American artist Al Taylor (1948–1999). With more than 150 sculptures, drawings, and prints drawn from several of the artist’s major series over nearly two decades, the exhibition will reveal the crisscrossing avenues of Taylor’s artistic inquiry and his innovative use of unexpected materials.

Photo of Al Taylor artworks installed at the High Museum.

Although Taylor lived and worked for most of his life in New York City, he established his career in Europe with exhibitions in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. Taylor presented his work in solo gallery exhibitions in the United States during his lifetime; however, his first museum exhibitions in this country were held posthumously. 

Photo of Al Taylor artworks installed at the High Museum.This exhibition is the first to offer an in-depth look at the breadth of Taylor’s artistic production. It explores the diverse nature and humor of his visual language and the reciprocity in his practice among drawing, sculpture, and printmaking. Taylor drew no hierarchical distinctions among the different media he used. Rather, each facilitated a variety of ways to test his hypotheses about visual perception and to pose the fundamental question “What are you looking at?”

Like many artists of his generation, Taylor often used commonplace objects, such as broomsticks, coffee cans, and hula hoops, to construct his three-dimensional works. He delighted in the deadpan materiality that gave his works form, graphically reproducing such ordinary subjects as kinks of twisted wire or the optical effects of transparent plastic. His art transcends straightforward observation to reveal the world in entirely new ways.

Photo of Al Taylor artworks installed at the High Museum.

Spanning all three levels of the High’s Renzo Piano–designed Anne Cox Chambers Wing, the exhibition will feature works from Taylor’s series Wheel Studies (1981–1985), Latin Studies (1984–1985), Pet Stains and Puddles (1989–1992), Pass the Peas (1991), X-Ray Tube (1995), Full Gospel Neckless (1997), and Bondage Duck (1998–99), among others.

Untitled (Latin Study), 1985

Wood, lacquer, and enamel paint mounted on particleboard
Collection of Debbie Taylor

Tayal0210 Untitled Latin Study 1985.fw 1168x1480.png

No title, 1985

Acrylic paint on newsprint
The Estate of Al Taylor, Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London

Storr Plate 5 Tayal0453.fw 1121x1480.png

Pet Stain Removal Device, 1989

Bamboo garden stakes, Plexiglas, enamel paint, wire, and electrical tape
The Estate of Al Taylor, Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London

Tayal0222 Pet Stain Removal Device 1989.fw 1180x1480.png

The Peabody Group #29, 1992

Graphite pencil, watercolor, gouache, india ink, colored inks, colored pencil, and ballpoint pen on wove paper
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York. Gift of the Modern and Contemporary Collectors Committee

Tayal0580 The Peabody Group No29 1992.fw 1147x1480.png

Black Piece (for Étienne-Jules Marey), 1990

Plexiglas, enamel paint, China Marker grease pencil, wood, and wire
The Estate of Al Taylor, Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London

Tayal0339 Black Piece For Etienne Jules Marey 1990 1158x1480.png

Pissing Across Crosby St., 1991

Line etching and spit bite aquatint printed in black ink on Hahnemühle Bütten paper
Trial Proof 2 of 2
The Estate of Al Taylor, Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London

Tayal1023.tp2 .fw 940x1480.png

X-Ray Tube, 1995

Inflated rubber inner tube with metal valve, grease crayon, and plastic-coated wire
The Estate of Al Taylor, Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London

Tayal0045 X Ray Tube 1995 Dz Install.fw 1173x1480.png

X-Ray Tube, 1995

Pencil, gouache, and colored pencil on paper
Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody

Tayal0631 X Ray Tube 1995.fw 1064x1480.png

Thongs, from the portfolio Ten Common (Hawaiian Household) Objects, 1989

Drypoint, sugar lift aquatint, and spit bite aquatint printed in black ink on Zerkall Bütten paper
Edition no. 11/15
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Purchase with funds from the Friends of Contemporary Art, 2010.187.10

2010.187.10 Taylor.fw 984x1480.png

Flypaper, from the portfolio Ten Common (Hawaiian Household) Objects, 1989

Line etching, spit bite aquatint, and drypoint printed in black ink on Zerkall Bütten paper
Edition no. 11/15
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Purchase with funds from the Friends of Contemporary Art, 2010.187.2

Tayal0350 Flypaper 1989.fw 870x1480.png

What I do is I measure things.

Al Taylor

About Al Taylor

Photo of the artist Al Taylor

Born in Springfield, Missouri, Taylor studied painting at the Kansas City Art Institute before moving to New York in 1970, where he lived and worked the rest of his life. As a young artist, Taylor developed his approach to painting while holding a number of jobs, including an assistantship to the influential American artist Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg’s medium-bending experimentation influenced Taylor, who in his work probed the limits between two- and three-dimensional artwork. In 1985 Taylor stopped painting and began to focus on the complexity of space by making sculptural objects that allowed him to look “into and through things.” He sometimes called his sculpture “drawing instruments” as they prompted a give-and-take between drawing and sculpture in his practice.
Throughout his career, Taylor’s curiosity was piqued by his travels and exposures to different cultures. A 1980 trip to Uganda, Kenya, and Senegal in 1980 introduced to him the notion of time’s multidimensionality—non-linear time stretched or truncated according to the past, present and future events that define it. The notion of time as a subjective, rather than objective, force was revelatory to the artist. Following trips to Hawaii in 1987 and 1988, Taylor incorporated motifs into his work—such as the everyday and overlooked subjects of his Ten Common (Hawaiian Household) Objects—that reflected a counter to the prevailing paradisiacal view of Hawaii.

Al Taylor, What Are You Looking At? is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Support for this exhibition is provided by

Major Funding

Generous support also provided by Sarah Eby-Ebersole and W. Daniel Ebersole.

Premier Exhibition Series Partner

Exhibition Series Sponsors

Premier Exhibition Series Supporters

Anne Cox Chambers Foundation, The Antinori Foundation, Ann and Tom Cousins, Sarah and Jim Kennedy, Jane and Hicks Lanier, Louise Sams and Jerome Grilhot

Contributing Exhibition Series Supporters

Barbara and Ron Balser, Corporate Environments, Peggy Foreman, James F. Kelly Charitable Trust, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, The Lubo Fund, Margot and Danny McCaul, Joyce and Henry Schwob

Generous support is also provided by

Alfred and Adele Davis Exhibition Endowment Fund, Anne Cox Chambers Exhibition Fund, Barbara Stewart Exhibition Fund, Dorothy Smith Hopkins Exhibition Endowment Fund, Eleanor McDonald Storza Exhibition Endowment Fund, Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment Fund, Helen S. Lanier Endowment Fund, Howell Exhibition Fund, John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Exhibition Endowment Fund