In the work of Al Taylor (1948–1999), nothing is quite what it seems. Or perhaps, objects are everything they seem, all at once. The High Museum’s exhibition "What Are You Looking At?" surveys Taylor’s sprawling practice, which blended a Cubist-style interest in portraying a subject simultaneously from every possible angle with the wit of a Conceptualist.
Like many of his contemporaries, Taylor, who studied painting at the Kansas City Art Institute, challenged the limits of form by outlining and altering the rules that had historically governed art-making. In early sculptures such as Untitled (Latin Study), 1985, he used wooden armatures to create three-dimensional constructions that appear as constellations of floating painted brushstrokes rendered tangible, their shadows producing flat compositions on the walls behind them. This examination of the minimum markings that can make a work of art recalls the approach of Taylor’s mentor Robert Rauschenberg in works like Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) and the "White Paintings" (1951).
Read more at Art in America.