14 October 2023 – 7 January 2024
Hauser & Wirth
Paris, France
Press Release
Hauser & Wirth’s inaugural exhibition in Paris will debut new works by critically acclaimed Los Angeles
artist Henry Taylor, whose major career survey arrives at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York on 4 October 2023 and will remain on view through January 2024. Taylor’s exhibition in Paris, the artist’s first prominent show in France, will comprise a wide range of over 30 paintings, sculptures and works on paper encompassing the remarkable breadth of his practice. Throughout his four-decade long career, Taylor has consistently and simultaneously embraced and rejected the tenets of traditional painting, as well as any formal label. Combining figurative, landscape and history painting, alongside drawing, installation and sculpture, Taylor’s vast body of highly personal work is rooted in the people and communities closest to him, often manifested together with poignant historical or pop-culture references. In this exhibition, with a guiding sense of human connection, Taylor leads us through a multifaceted narrative.
In the lead up to this show, Taylor extended his studio practice to Paris for a residency in the city during the months of June and July 2023. During this time, Taylor has drawn inspiration from the unparalleled array of historical art collections contained in the city, such as the Musée d’Orsay where he was surrounded by the work of French impressionists, expressionists and fauvists who have inspired him since an early age. Taylor’s studied awareness of his art historical predecessors and and contemporaries is continually prevalent throughout his work, having gained influence from Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Phyllida Barlow, Philip Guston, Gerhard Richter, David Hammons and Glenn Ligon, among others. These influences are portrayed in the exhibition with works such as ‘Forest fever ain’t nothing like, “Jungle Fever”’ (2023), depicting four figures in a composition akin to Edouard Manet’s ‘Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe,’ as well as a circular sculpture made from toilet paper rolls encased by wooden sticks, partly inspired by David Hammons’ ‘Untitled (Night Train)’ (1989).