This week: Amanda talks to Taylor McKimens!! Taylor McKimens was born in 1976 in Winterhaven, California and lives and works in New York. He studied at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. McKimens has exhibited extensively and notably at Deitch Projects, NY, Macro Museum, Rome, The Hole, NY. Most recent exhibitions include: Studio d'Arte Raffaeli, When Things Get Back to Normal, Galerie Zürcher, Paris (solo 2011), New York Minute at The Garage Center, Moscow, curated by Kathy Grayson (2011), Spaghetti and Beachballs, curated by Donald Baechler, Studio d'Arte Raffaelli, Trento, Italy (2011) and Facemaker at Royal T, Los Angeles (2011). Taylor McKimens initiates us in the suburban desert of the contemporary American wild west, portrayed as an extended backyard calling to be explored. Drainage ditches, weather-worn palm trees, dusty trucks make up the playing field where young characters embark on brave endeavors in an almost Edward Hopper-esque solitude. McKimens is completely unperturbed by the messier side of things and in fact revels in the drips and oozes that are the traces of life. In one of the show's major works, Knee Deep, the bright, acidic-colored canvas shows a young, baseball-capped girl stymied in a ditch. McKimens creates a certain sense of no-time as if she has always been there and will always be there, contemplating her next move. Alternating between loose areas of color with atmospheric gesture and dense areas of confident line quality where even the slightest details, a fly on a shoe, a piece of trash in a puddle, are given equal stature on the canvas.

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