Exhibition poster for:
Ken Taylor Reynaga
‘Mountains and Roses’
03/06 → 04/06 2021
West Hollywood
Press release:
Simchowitz is pleased to present an exhibition of new oil paintings and ceramics by Los Angeles based artist Ken Taylor Reynaga, on view from March 6 - April 10, 2021. This is Taylor Reynaga’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, and the gallery’s inaugural exhibition.
Mountains and Roses
And so, we fall into the Form of our landscape
And function under the Shade of our minds
In Mountains and Roses, Taylor Reynaga leads viewers on a journey through epic landscapes and a garden of hypnotic roses. On this journey, Taylor Reynaga imparts the viewer with a dynamic sensation of movement due in part to the highly physical painting process he undergoes as he applies his dense, flowing brushstrokes to the canvas. The trapezoidal-shaped canvases of Taylor Reynaga’s rose paintings and the expansive scale of the mountains subsume the viewer’s focus, an exercise in diminishing the ego and allowing intuitive sensations to guide the experience. Punctuated throughout the landscapes of the paintings and the space of the gallery are Taylor Reynaga’s iconic sombreros, which harken to Taylor Reynaga’s experience growing up in Bakersfield, California.
Ken Taylor Reynaga (b. 1990 in Bakersfield, CA; lives and works in Pasadena, CA) received his BA in 2014 from California State University. Taylor Reynaga’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at The Mistake Room, Guadalajara; The Newsstand Project, Los Angeles; Capital Gallery, San Francisco. His works have been included in group exhibitions at Fort Gansevoort, New York; The Pit, Los Angeles; Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco; Steve Turner, Los Angeles; Penske Projects, Montecito.
Dimensions:
24h x 18w in
Ken Taylor Reynaga’s (b. 1990, Lynwood, CA) work emerges from the quotidian intimacies of people’s lives—from the meals we share with family, Sunday soccer games at the park, and even backyard boogies with friends. For Ken, these seemingly private moments—of significance only to those who experience them—are where we confront the broader contradictions of being human. Born in Southern California but raised in Bakersfield, Taylor Reynaga grew up in a place where newly arrived migrants live alongside people who either by choice or necessity settled in the agricultural hub of California’s Central Valley. This region, in Taylor Reynaga’s practice, is envisioned as a new frontier forged by narratives of rebirth and transformation at the edges of society. The promises of different worlds at the margin however are always accompanied by difficult experiences. For Taylor Reynaga, this becomes most pertinent when considering the ways we grapple with our pasts and our identities.
Thickly layered paintings of varying scales that elegantly and intentionally blur the boundaries between figuration and abstraction depict the emotionally loaded details of the everyday that Taylor Reynaga is invested in. Men wearing cowboy hats at a soccer stadium, a vaquero dancing with a woman at what could be a wedding, an illegal cockfight, a table filled with food—these common scenes on Taylor Reynaga’s canvases are fairly ordinary at first. When closely analyzed however, one notices that some of his pictures are painted on tablecloths or old bed sheets; that a cowboy hat is painted next to the flower table arrangement that a mother has made; or that the food on the table clearly tells us that whoever sat to enjoy it had limited means. The nuanced approach to engage with the charged relationship between masculinity and the domestic, the lives of mixed race people, and the inequities of class is what makes Taylor Reynaga’s practice distinct from his peers and predecessors. In a canon of Art History that has very narrowly defined what we consider Chicanx or Latinx art, Taylor’s works exist uncomfortably. The political in his practice is embodied, viscerally felt, and sited in the most private acts. Despite the bold painterly gestures and bursts of bright color that have come to define his stylistic approach, there is a quietness in the work and as you encounter it the experience resembles one of being invited to see a family photo album—albeit one that speaks to the realities of many families and not just one.
Taylor Reynaga received his BA in 2014 from California State University. Taylor Reynaga’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at The Mistake Room, Guadalajara; The Newsstand Project, Los Angeles; Capital Gallery, San Francisco. His works have been included in group exhibitions at Fort Gansevoort, New York; The Pit, Los Angeles; Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco; Steve Turner, Los Angeles; Penske Projects, Montecito.