Marc Jancou Contemporary is pleased to announce Stephanie Taylor’s first exhibition at the gallery, Pork Shank Stew. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York.
Stephanie Taylor’s work draws from an archive of linguistic twists – puns, rhymes, and otherwise – as the basis of invented narratives that are realized as works in sculpture, print, video, and audio. Language is the cornerstone of Taylor’s exhibitions, which she composes based on select words that reference the specific location of the exhibition. These words are then broken apart into syllables, which Taylor derives rhymes from, and strings the resulting words together to create a story. The visual works take their cue from these often absurd and humorous tales.
The title of the exhibition, Pork Shank Stew, is a phonetic extrapolation of “Marc Jancou,” in which the name of the gallery is pronounced in a heavy Boston accent. Set in Boston, the story features a street vendor who rises at dawn with his dog, Wiffles, and sells Boston’s traditional street food, pork shank stew. He also sells honey, and uses it in his unusually sweet stew recipe, which includes poi from Hawaii in addition to fawn. He survives mostly on gin and legumes, perhaps a stone fruit on a good day, and shad row on wedding days only. The exhibition includes cast bronze, aluminum, and papier-mâché sculptures, as well as sketches, prints, video, and an audio work, which is performed by Arlys Alford and the Laura Steenberge Brass Group.
Born in 1971, Stephanie Taylor grew up in New York City, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from the Art Center College of Design. Solo exhibitions include Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne and Daniel Hug, Los Angeles. Select group exhibitions include Paradise Lost - Holidays in Hell, Centro Cultural Andratx, Mallorca, Spain (2010); Kommando Calvin Cohn, curated by André Butzer, Salon 94, New York (2007); The Courtyard Gallery Project, Beijing, China (2007); HOTEL, London (2007); Exil des Imaginären. Politik Ästhetik, Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria (2007); and New Ghost Entertainment- Entitled, Kunsthaus Dresden, Germany (2007). Recent publications include Chop Shop, Les Figues Press, Los Angeles, 2007 and The Stephanie Taylor Songbook, Verlag Heckler und Koch, Berlin, 2010 (forthcoming.)
For more information please contact Kelly Woods at Kelly@marcjancou.com.