Sam Taylor-Wood Overview

In a well-appointed flat, a series of scenes unfolds around the circumference of a room: a man sits on a couch, head resting on his fist as if lost in troubled thoughts; across the room another man crouches over a dark... [more]

In a well-appointed flat, a series of scenes unfolds around the circumference of a room: a man sits on a couch, head resting on his fist as if lost in troubled thoughts; across the room another man crouches over a dark wood chest -- is he doubled over in pain or merely inspecting the valuable antique? At one end of the room a naked woman straddling a man is in mid-orgasm (we see her back); at the other end, a ghostly figure in a long dress gazes off into the distance. The photograph mixes interaction with isolation, like real life. It's one of the images in the Taylor-Wood series "Five Revolutionary Seconds." Each installment presents a different interior and a different cast of characters; they're photographed with a special camera that makes a single image through a 360 degree turn. Taylor-Wood intermixes actors and friends in these vignettes, creating images that keep the viewer wondering whether these are documents of last night's party or completely fabricated tableaux. The images themselves and the accompanying soundtrack of overheard voices are the only clues in this guessing game. Taylor-Wood has worked in video and film as well as photography. In the early '90s she shot still photos, with herself as the model. She then shifted to film installation as her preferred medium, producing works such as the four-screen "Killing Time," in which isolated characters mimed the lyrics to an opera soundtrack. Gradually she gravitated back to photography, but this time she incorporated sound and the large format of film and video projection. In the large pieces from "Five Revolutionary Seconds," the subjects appear elongated and motionless, as if part of a giant frieze. Unlike classical bas reliefs, however, Taylor-Wood's works explode in Technicolor and her subjects adopt playful, often contorted poses. While she is clearly aware of classical models from both painting and sculpture, Taylor-Wood says, "The thing I'm trying to do is just hone in on fragments of situations and expand them right to their maximum." The documentary aspect of her work aligns her (along with painter/photographer Richard Billingham) with British Kitchen-Sink realism, but the classical references and posh settings redefine the genre as something more like cocktail-party realism. Within this context, Taylor-Wood continues to pose provocative questions about identity. Her "Soliloquy" series consists of horizontally divided panels where the juxtaposition of images above and below instantly creates a relationship between the two and sends the viewer searching for meaning. Again it is elusive, but Taylor-Wood explains, "I wanted to depict the same separation [as in an altar piece], the formal sense between above and below, between sublime and physical, immaterial and material, and I sought to bring them into line in a whole that would produce a sort of focus on the territory that lies between the conscious and the unconscious. Above is the individual who thinks or reflects and below, his oneiric and anguished reflection... The lower tale is a dissemination of scattered organs, those that make up the 'unconscious' body of the male or female figure [above]." Taylor-Wood has exhibited at numerous galleries, including her husband's renowned White Cube; she has been on the short list for the Turner Prize; and she was among those selected for "Sensation," the international show of Young British Artists, as the latest crop of Brit renegades has been dubbed. The way she blends the look of documentary-style realism with staged reappraisals of the classics opens a fertile dialogue between the real and the artificial, between photography and the media of the Old Masters. [show less]