Art Taco: There Goes The Neighborhood: Recent works by Taylor Pilote @ Tempus Projects

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

There Goes The Neighborhood: Recent works by Taylor Pilote @ Tempus Projects

Taylor Pilote, "There goes the neighborhood"

I saw some of the works in this show at the USF MFA show at the CAM last year (more on these later). In this show at Tempus, titled "There Goes The Neighborhood", Taylor Pilote evolves some of his earlier themes.

Work by Taylor Pilote

The artist grew up around his father's body shop and became proficient with the techniques and fluent in the automotive and motorcycle cultures, its history, forms and signifiers. While this is a macho culture, it is also an aspect of consumerism, and within the realm of the subjects of Pop Art, though recontextualized.

Work by Taylor Pilote.

Along the N. wall of the gallery, at first glance, it looks like a row of suspended, hooded hobgoblins. They look organic and somewhat like scrota. Like the skin of automobiles draped from pegs, there are enough formal clues, and reproduction taillights to render the forms specific as to brand and year. Pilote calls these the "Harley Earl Series", after the famous designer.
I showed photographs of the show to a car-savvy friend, and he reeled off the brand and model year for each of the three sculptures. These remind me of Dali's clocks sagging in time. The three cars the forms are based on are now 50+ years old. Not ordinary cars, mind you, but automotive icons, worn, flowing, melting, distorting in time.


Work by Taylor Pilote

There are also three road barricades in various stages of puddling. They echo the automotive forms and help to sculpturally redefine the gallery space. They also help to show that the barriers that guided the autos are also pooling.

There is an hypnotic video loop of two beer bottles bobbing together in water.

Two beer-themed sculptures are on the S. side of the gallery. They are cabinets filled with beer cans. Mirrors make them appear to recede into infinity. Atop the cabinet is a chicken wing dipping into blue cheese, the combination is more than a little nauseating. The second is like a cooler window with the same mirror trick, with endless cans receding, something that Homer Simpson or Al Bundy would see as a Stargate of beer.