Taylor Anton White is an American contemporary artist based in Virginia. His large-scale abstract assemblages combine traditional mediums with found materials to explore the sculptural possibilities of painting in the digital age.
Read MoreWhite was born in San Diego, California. Prior to pursuing painting, the artist had a nine-year career as a Marine in the U.S. military. He studied at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he experimented with performance art, painting, and sculpture. He graduated with a BA in studio art in 2017.
White has held artist residencies including the Cycamore Art Residency in Brooklyn (2018) and the Espositivo 7B Residency in Madrid (2017).
Taylor White's paintings incorporate utilitarian materials such as rivets, cardboard, wood, spray paint, textiles, and sewn objects, as well as traditional painting and drawing mediums including acrylic, charcoal, and oil stick.
Typically working on large-scale canvas, White embraces fragmentation, layering, and improvisation, adding and subtracting marks and materials through an intuitive, experimental process. In an interview with Whitehot Magazine, the artist states: 'Play is critical to my art-making. ... I usually start without any plan, although I often give myself some kind of restriction, like it's Monday and I want to have a new painting by Friday. ... I try to intuitively put things together and then delete things until it's there.'
White's practice recalls elements of formalism, abstract expressionism, modernism, contemporary abstraction, Internet art, and the anti-aesthetic. References to modernism can be located in his frequent, repeated use of the grid in various forms—the loosely hand-painted grid in the background of Don't Put the Tron in the Tron / Always Put the Tron in the Tron (2021) is collaged with flat blocks of colour, small abstract sketches, and gestural lashings of spray paint.
Other works share formalist concerns, such as Breakfast cops, WiFi (2018)—a painting dominated by a pastel blue, stuffed textile upper, and broken up by strips of canvas offcuts, crudely woven to reveal parts of the wooden frame.
Cat Party (For Cats Only) (2019) is a composite wall assemblage consisting of multiple canvases and wood panels roughly arranged in a rectangular form, revealing the wall in patches of negative space. A paint roller extension pole resting in between canvas slivers protrudes from the painting's top edge.
With cryptically disparate titles that often reference pop and Internet subcultures—including WiFi Tony Robbins Internet (Workout Diet) (2019), or Stella, Nintendo (Death Threats) (2020)—Taylor White's practice navigates the complexities of process, communication, and the consumption of art in contemporary digital culture.
Selected solo exhibitions by Taylor White include Invisible Cities, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles (2021); American Cheese, ADA Gallery, Richmond, (2020); WiFi Computer Lol Haha, MARQUEE PROJECTS, Bellport (2020); Free_Hotdog.pdf, Monica King Contemporary, New York (2020); Juice Monster, LC Gallery, Brussels (2019); Hillbilly Antimatter, ADA Gallery, Richmond (2019); Zap-Zap, Explosion Sound, Fish, g.gallery, Seoul (2019); Crimes at Sea, LC Gallery, Brussels (2018); Memories of a Carpet Monster, Galerie Kremers, Berlin (2018); 1991 Plymouth Voyager, Like New, MARQUEE PROJECTS, Bellport (2018); and Who Ain't Got Time for Hickies?, TWFINEART, Brisbane (2018).
Selected group exhibitions include Over the Borderline, Galería Fran Reus, Mallorca (2021); The Sun Also Rises, Everyday Gallery, Antwerp (2021); Wild Blue Yonder, Newchild Gallery, Antwerp (2021); _Unlearn, Relearn, Repea_t, TWFINEART, Brisbane (2019); and Future Ruins, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (2019).
White has presented at international art fairs including the Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair (2020), UNTITLED, ART (2019), Miami Beach (2019), Art Busan (2019), and KIAF SEOUL (2019, 2018).
Taylor White's website can be found here,and the artist's Instagram here.
Misong Kim | Ocula | 2021
