Taylor McKimens

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Studio d’Arte Raffaelli of Trento Thursday, January 17, 2013 opens the solo exhibition of the American artist Taylor McKimens curated by Marco Tomasini.
The exhibition kicks off the exhibition “Young contemporary painting” that periodically presents young and sparkling solutions taken from the vast and intricate contemporary painting landscape.

On display McKimens brings a bit of his America, or rather the traits of it that make it immediately recognizable. The torrid heat of the desert, the strips of asphalt that wind like snakes in the uninhabited landscape, the small rural communities, inhabited by almost alien characters. The baking sun that accompanied his childhood in the Californian town of Winterhaven, always seems to illuminate his compositions. An incident light that exaggerates colors by transforming plants and men into beings of altered colors, fluorescent. In a cartoon style, the outlines mark out a daily reality, simple and banal, but made special by a melancholy background that often and willingly turns into sharp irony. This is the American spirit of “never take yourself too seriously” of “take it easy” and that is the leitmotif to all his works. There is a lot of pop art in McKimens, that elevates the everyday object to the top layer of culture, turning it into an art object, but with the addition of something extra, definitely uncomfortable and disturbing. So the disgust, the horror, the feeling of repugnance are part of the game and the scope of the imaginative possible. With McKimens the unexpected can then happen, ready to amaze us behind the door. His cacti are no longer silent and immobile, but seem to come to life, just as the loneliness of the truck driver in a diner is enlivened by explosions of color from atomic bomb effect. Deformities can appear here and there, both on plants and on humans. His characters are as cloying as cactuses, genetically altered because contaminated by an environment now too saturated with that “American dream” where everything is possible and that has transformed them into automatons, with expressionless faces, intent on always doing the same action. So much so that they are almost “the objects”, a symbol of the most unbridled consumption to take possession of their masters, in an eerie and grotesque fusion, but always with a fair dose of irony.
A catalogue with critical text by Marco Tomasini will be published for the exhibition.

Born in California in 1976, Taylor McKimens lives and works in New York City. His works have been exhibited in prestigious places of international culture, such as Deitch Projects, The Hole and MoMA in New York, the Macro Museum in Rome. Recent solo exhibitions include those held at the Zürcher Gallery in Paris (2011); The Garage Center in Moscow (2011); Royal T in Los Angeles (2011).