Bill Saylor: Open Studio

Chinati Foundation is pleased to host an opening and reception for Artist in Residence Bill Saylor on Thursday, May 13, 2010 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at the Ice Plant on East Oak Street. Everyone is invited to come by and see the show.

An idea of Bill Saylor’s work might be gleaned from the title of his 2005 show at the Yerba Buena Art Center in San Francisco: Kults, Werewolves and Sarcastic Hippies. The New York-based artist makes paintings in which different traditions of art are blended and mashed. He draws not only on abstract art but on graffiti, ads, cartoons, logos, doodling, etc. In a Saylor painting, swathes and blobs of Ab-Ex-like impasto jostle for space with monsters, skeletons, leering ectoplasmic shapes, and other types of stock visual stuff to be seen on (for example) construction-site fencing and the sides of vintage hot rods. Saylor uses a diverse array of techniques to build up his canvases, so that no single “style”—or type of imagery—predominates. The paintings that result are raucous and polyglot.

At the Ice Plant Saylor will be showing a number of new paintings, all large-scale, including one huge one. Also on display will be a group of sculptures made from materials the artist has found while rummaging at the dump.

For anyone who can’t come to the opening, the Ice Plant will also be open from noon to 5:00PM on Friday, May 14th and Saturday, May 15th, 2010.

Bill Saylor has been participating in group exhibitions since the early 1990s. His work has been on view in galleries and museums in New York, Tokyo, Miami, Frankfurt, Las Vegas, Copenhagen, Athens, Los Angeles, and other cities. He has had several solo shows at Leo Koenig Inc. in New York.