TAYLOR WHITE : HILLBILLY ANTIMATTER May 2019

Taylor White

Hillbilly Antimatter

May 2019

Taylor White, Fake Zoo (Fake), 2019, Acrylic, charcoal, airbrush, marker, and sewing on canvas, 85h x 69w x 1 1/2d in

ADA Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by artist Taylor A. White, on view now until June 1st, 2019.

Taylor White, Folklore, Mathmatics, 2019, Acrylic, charcoal, marker, pencil, colored pencil, paper, and sewing on canvas, 66h x 96w x 1 1/2d inches

Taylor White is having a laugh, and his latest show, Hillbilly Antimatter, offers an open-call invitation to join in on the fun. 

White’s multi-media, large-scale abstractions make visible his penchant for humor, chaos, and spontaneity. His images are perfectly, or precariously, perched on the line between completely serious and joyfully absurd. White is attracted to images that confuse; he aims to deliberately confound and surprise the viewer, while simultaneously fulfilling what he describes as his primary objective in art-making: to make something that he, personally, has not seen before. He intentionally skirts all conventions of narrative and communicates instead through a visual language that is at once a foreign tongue and a comfortingly familiar, if not nostalgic vernacular. 

Taylor White, Grape (Grape), 2019, Acrylic, charcoal, spray paint, airbrush, marker, pen, paper, stuffing, and sewing on canvas 68h x 60w x 1 1/2d in

White’s work pulses with his distinctive impulsivity, the artist’s stream of consciousness splayed across the canvas. Strips and scraps of fabric- stitched together with unmistakeable skill while appearing to be haphazardly assembled- are joined by charcoal, acrylics, plastics, oil paints and googly eyes, among other diverse materials, to form images that are exceptionally novel and almost impossibly harmonious. White works in a principled manner of anti-structure that is slyly subverted, or otherwise amplified, by neatly doodled details and flashes of pure pigment; his paintings are deliberate and purposefully disagreeable while his process is kinetic and wild, which is to say that there is, in fact, both a method to his madness and a madness to his method. If White’s work reads at times like a private joke, it is one from which the viewer is never left out. Instead, Hillbilly Antimatter invites its audience inside the artist’s childhood freezer, “filled with popsicles and secret passageways.”

Taylor White, It's Like You Don't Even Care About Vitamins, 2019, Acrylic, charcoal, spray paint, oil stick, airbrush, pencil, paper, and sewing on canvas 84h x 68w x 1 1/2d in

White, who refers to himself an as “eternal optimist,” makes a game out of art-making, challenging himself to paint in the dark or to create new works from leftover fragments of canvas salvaged from his studio floor.

“My primary objective in making art is simply to make something that I haven’t personally seen before. To work with an object until is sort of surprises me. To wrestle with something until I win, or until I lose, and to challenge myself to have the confidence to show work that I regard as total failure.”

For more information, visit our website:
adagallery.com

Hillbilly Antimatter will be on view at ADA Gallery, April 5 - 27, 2019
228 West Broad Street
Richmond, Virginia 23220