On show at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam from January 26
to April 1 are photographs and films by the English artist Sam
Taylor-Wood (b. London, 1967). A selection of the recent
works she exhibited at the end of 2001 in London, will be
supplemented in Amsterdam by a number of films and photo-
works of the nineties. It will be the first major solo
presentation in the Netherlands to be devoted to this
representative of the Brit Pack.
Vulnerability, emotionality, alienation and loneliness are recurring
themes in Taylor-Woods films from the early nineties onwards. In
Brontosaurus (1995) a nude man dances in slow motion to
melancholy music like an introverted faun, both ecstatic and
subdued. The face of the woman in Hysteria (1997) displays
extreme emotions. There are no sounds, so the viewer cannot be
certain whether she is moved by joy, despair or both. Mute (2001) is
(literally) a silent film: a young man sings a passage from an opera
but the sound has been erased. His face and gestures convey
violent feelings and the image is so expressive as to conjure up the
suggestion of music.
The exhibition also shows selections of earlier series and recent
photo-works. Five Revolutionary Seconds V (1996) is a panoramic
photo whose sequences of moments and situations in a room relate
it to film. Like the other works on the series it was made in the
apartment of friends from Londons artistic beau monde. Often
completely incongruent scenes showing people devoid of mutual
contact, lost and decadent, form images of 360º, more than seven
metres in length. The alienation they evoke is reinforced by sound,
fragments of conversation, brittle and disturbing.
The Soliloquies (from 1998 on) as well as Taylor-Woods
photographs of the past year refer in form and subject-matter to
painting. The construction of the Soliloquies recalls altarpieces and
consist of a large painting with a small panoramic photograph
below. Soliloquy III is a reconstruction of Velasquez The Toilet of
Venus (1650); in the panorama we see naked figures in an interior,
engrossed in erotic acts. Venus herself sits in the background, lost
in thought.
The relationship between the two images is puzzling: does the
panorama depict the inner world of the woman gazing into the
mirror, or is she an enlargement of one of the figures on the
predellaNULL
Sam Taylor-Woods is undoubtedly one of the least extrovert
members of the Sensation Generation, a group of British artists
who created an international furore in the nineties. While Tracey
Emin (whose work can be seen at the Stedelijk later this year)
thematizes her own life in an unmediafied manner, Taylor-Woods
prefers to represent her experiences by resorting to classical
symbols, often derived from (religious) paintings. Mortality and
transiency are the themes of photos like Bound Ram and Self
Portrait as a Tree, images whose powerful symbolism is not entirely
devoid of pathos. But this melancholy self-image is countered by the
provocative, erotically charged Self Portrait in a Single Breasted Suit
with Hare. The title is an unmistakable reference to the disease she
overcame but at the same time, viz. the hare she is holding up, a
frank avowal of (erotic) lust for life.
Over the past few years Sam Taylor-Woods work has been shown
in several major international and solo exhibitions in venues which
include the Fondazione Prada in Milan, the Centre National de la
Photographie in Paris and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina
Sofia in Madrid. In 1997 she was awarded the Illy Café Prize for the
most promising artist, and in 1998 she was nominated for Englands
prestigious Turner Prize.
Sam Taylor-Woods show at the Stedelijk is accompanied by a
Cahier with an article by Hripsime Visser, curator of photography.
IMAGE:
Sam Taylor-Woods
Self Portrait as a Tree
2000
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