FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SAM TAYLOR-WOOD
November 4, 2004 through January 2005

The Donald Young Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new photographs and a video by British artist Sam Taylor-Wood. For her first solo exhibition in Chicago, the artist will debut a series of black and white photographs taken in rural Georgia together with a video entitled Ascension and two large-scale color photographs.

Ascension, staged in a dark, dramatically lit room, features two men and a dove completely oblivious of each other's presence.   On the floor a well-dressed man lies seemingly   unconscious on his back, while a second man, with a dove perched on his head, tap dances on his chest. The figure on the floor never wakes, nor does he even stir, and the tap dancing man keeps his eyes high on the horizon, never acknowledging the man under his feet.   A photographic still from the video is also included in the exhibition.

The Leap depicts a shirtless man hovering in mid-air amongst the trees. The subject, looking down, soars effortlessly in the air as the ground below is concealed from the viewer. With this large-scale photograph, and with Ascension, Taylor-Wood explores the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, fusing religious imagery informed by Renaissance and Baroque painting with the secular, urban and contemporary landscape that she inhabits.

Also on view are a series of thirteen black and white documentary photographs that the artist took during a ten-day trip to the rural South earlier this year.   Informed by American artists such as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, Taylor-Wood set out to experience the southern American landscape half a century later from the perspective of a foreigner.   The dark and solitary nature of this work starkly contrasts the vibrantly colored, elaborately staged photographs and videos for which the artist is best known.   Taylor-Wood's impressions of the south portray a desolate and timeless landscape which when viewed together, like much of her work, begin to create a fragmented narrative.

Sam Taylor-Wood was born in London in 1967 and graduated from Goldsmith's College in 1990.   Her work has been shown internationally including solo exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Zurich and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC.   Important group shows include the Carnegie International and the Venice Biennale where in 1997 she received the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist. The artist was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1998.  

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 to 5:30 and Saturday, 11:00 to 5:30.   If you would like more information, please contact Emily Letourneau or Lisa Williamson at 312.455.0100.