Nancy Shaver

TAYLOR DAVIS AND NANCY SHAVER
OCTOBER 21–NOVEMBER 19, 2016
OPENING FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21 FROM 6–8PM

Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce a two person exhibition with artists Taylor Davis and Nancy Shaver. This exhibition brings together the work of two artists who are deeply invested in objects and images, both found and made, and the relationship among their form, material and function. Exploring sculpture’s ability to be both spatial and two-dimensional, while illuminating the capacity for surface to describe form, the work of Taylor Davis and Nancy Shaver is visually democratic, straightforward and rhythmic. Both bodies of work are fragmentary, yet allude to an internal logic as the artists collect, organize, and present shape, image and pattern.

Taylor Davis' mobiles, constructed from a single sheet of aircraft birch plywood, serve as a three-dimensional guide to the connections between diverse images the artist cuts from books, catalogues, magazines, and encyclopedias. Stencils of red and green oil paint heighten the complexity of the non-linear relationships made between the cutouts and the form. Experimenting with material, image, color and space, Davis compels one to consider the role orientation plays in establishing hierarchies within subjective perception. The work, as a whole, situates the viewer in a place of uneasy alignment between various systems and components, all which circuitously exist on an exquisitely constructed mobile whose arrangement is dictated by chance.

Much like Davis, Shaver uses form to create relationships between materials, textures and patterns. Pairing handmade works alongside found materials and conventional fabrics, Shaver arranges patterned cubes into a kind of geometric collage. Shaver’s use of the grid gives structure to her serendipitous material choices. The usual associations between mass produced objects and handmade artwork are leveled, as use and value are distorted and decontextualized. Having been stripped of their existing identity, Shaver’s sculptures are non-hierarchical as they nod to the visual pleasure that can be found not only in works of art, but also in everyday objects.

Taylor Davis and Nancy Shaver have worked on various projects and exhibitions over the past several years, but this is the first time either of their work has been exhibited in Portland, Oregon. The exhibition is organized by Conny Purtill, an artist and book designer living and working in Los Angeles, CA.

Taylor Davis (b. 1959, California) lives and works in Boston, MA. She received her Diploma of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1984 and her BS of Ed from Tufts University in 1985. She received her MFA from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in 1997. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art and White Columns, both in New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Institute of Contemporary Art and Museum of Fine Arts, both in Boston, MA; The Contemporary Austin, TX; Office Baroque, Antwerp, Belgium; and UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia. She was the recipient of the Museum of Fine Arts Traveling Scholarship, Milton and Sally Avery Scholarship at Bard College, Massachusetts Cultural Council Sculpture Grant, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston Artist Prize, St. Botolph Foundation Grant, Anonymous Was a Woman, and Radcliffe Fellowship. Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and Fogg Art Museum. Davis has been a teacher at Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

 

Adams and Ollman Gallery

209 SW 9th Avenue

Portland, Oregon

503.724.0684

www.adamsandollman.com