The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

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April 6, 2014 to September 21, 2014 |

Taylor Davis: If you steal a horse, and let him go, he’ll take you to the barn you stole him from

Taken from a short story by author William Gass, the title of Taylor Davis’s exhibition points to the circular sense of movement that is inherent in both the conceptual and physical aspects of her work. Davis’s deep interest in sculpture is based in the way that a viewer’s orientation can be influenced by the perception of both form and language in space, and how this experience is an analogy to the ongoing need to constantly orient oneself in relationship to the world.

The exhibition includes four related bodies of work: built forms, which are thoughtfully crafted wood objects that direct the viewer’s attention between material and form, inside and outside, and movement and stasis; the artist’s text-based works that simultaneously engage and distract the viewer’s attention, slowing down, and in some cases thwarting, the certainty of interpretation; collages that present imagery in a non-hierarchical format, suggesting that meaning is not preordained, but rather is to be found in the act of looking; and shaped canvases that play with perception by combining a Minimalist reserve with restless Op-art-like visual activity.

Richard Klein, Exhibitions Director.

Taylor Davis was born in 1959 in Palm Springs, California, and lives and works in Boston.