Taylor Davis - Boardroom No. 1

The gallery is pleased to present a new series of sculptures by artist Taylor Davis. boardroom no. 1 is the artist’s eleventh solo exhibit and her first major solo exhibition in New York since her inclusion in the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

In the many writings about Taylor Davis’s work, some form of the phrase, “it appears like… but is not,” frequently occurs. A category of discourse is thus brought forward, uttered, only to withdraw and reinvent itself with new form and language present. “is, but is not ” also reads “is and more”. This exhibition coincides with the What Matters exhibit at the Worcester Museum, MA.

Whether the expressed discourse directs a viewer to architectural structures, furniture design, livestock equipment, or the history of minimalism, Davis consistently places her viewers “in the company of objects.” Most often crafted in wood, her scrupulous attention to scale, joinery, structural integrity, and space create objects with agency. Her sculptures – decidedly non-anthropomorphic – are present tense, inviting the observer into the moment of viewing while remaining separate, independent. Davis’s objects have alterity, sometimes performing the role of host or facilitator, but always an “other” to viewer.

In the new body of sculpture titled “boardroom no.1”, Davis is looking at the intersection of two very different sites of exchange, the corporate meeting room and the lumberyard. Simultaneously working in three subcategories – “DICK’s hat”, “Elegance”, and “what’s left?” – Davis’s objects take and surrender control, allowing for beauty, anger, politics, and humor, as well as the pleasure/embarrassment of shape loving.

– Micah Malone

Taylor Davis (b. Palm Springs, CA) lives and works in Boston, MA. She received her MFA from Bard College, her BS of Education from Tufts University, and her Diploma of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Exhibitions include Office Baroque Gallery, Antwerp; Samson Projects, Boston MA; White Columns, New York, NY; Austin Museum of Art, Austin TX; ICA, Boston MA; Triple Candie, New York, NY; Green Street Gallery, Boston; Chicago Arts Council, Chicago. Her work appeared in the Whitney Biennial in 2004. Davis is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and The Fogg Art Museum at Harvard. Her works have been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, and Artforum. Currently, Davis serves as co?Chair at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.