Issue 08
TAYLOR MCKIMENS
By Carolline Kim
Taylor McKimens creates in his own dimension, somewhere between 2-D and 3-D. His artwork—part painting, part paper sculpture—leaps out into physical space from some mysterious point of origin in his mind.
Just as prominent as the dimensions of his work, McKimens’s subject matter commands attention by finding beauty in the ordinary: a sandwich, a beat-up pickup truck, potted plants in old tin cans; everyday objects transformed into abstractions that represent the process of time. Like snapshots or relics taken from a time capsule, McKimens’s creations evoke moments in time, moments in life, and the progression and change that inevitably follow. Which isn’t to say that his sole purpose is to expound some lofty socio-philosophical commentary. “My art is more about things like decay and some more layered personal stuff than it is about some sort of cut-and-dry social agenda,” says McKimens. “I poke a little fun at that stuff in the way anyone from the same background might, but at the same time those are the things that I love.”
McKimens originally wanted to be a comic book artist, and ended up going to an art school in Seattle that he says he picked “because it had a comic book page in the catalog.” Growing up in a small town on the California-Mexico border, McKimens found the small, forprofit art school’s brochure in his high school guidance counselor’s office, and liked it more than the two other art schools’ brochures there. Once in Seattle, however, teachers would tell him about Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, which he transferred to and graduated from in 1999. McKimens first exhibited his work at L.A.’s New Image Art Gallery as part of the Rich Jacobs-curated Move group shows, and in 2001 had his first solo show at New Image Art. Since then, McKimens, who now resides in Brooklyn, has shown his work across the U.S., Europe, and Japan.
When asked if there’s a certain message he would like people to take from his art, McKimens shakes his head. “I’m definitely not trying to nail anyone down to one way of looking at it,” he says. “I don’t like art like that, where there’s one message. It’s like some kind of crossword puzzle or something for the viewer to solve.
That stuff bores me to death.” While he hopes people will see something meaningful in his work, he also wants his art to be open enough to allow for myriad interpretations, and is quick to point out that he never intended his work to fill one specific mold or category. “Sometimes I think people get caught up in the novelty of the play between 2-D and 3-D. It’s interesting to me, but the drawing is still most important, with or without the 3-D aspects. People have compared me to artists like Red Grooms, but I don’t really like the way a lot of his work looks kind of rudimentary and gimmicky, like a lot of cardboard cutouts just standing around. Sometimes I get defensive if people view my work in a sort of Jerry Springer kind of way. I grew up kind of poor in a desert town, and a lot of the imagery I use is based on my life, things that I love.”
Continuously working and pushing the limits of painting and sculpture, McKimens is intent on growing as an artist. Taking inspiration from his own background and from “bad art,” McKimens chooses things he dislikes, giving him something to rebel against while offering a new direction to explore. “I hardly ever look at art I really like. It’s weird, but somehow it only ever shows you a great way of doing things that someone else is already doing well. It’s inspiring, but it doesn’t give you any tangible directions to go in that haven’t already been explored.”
That boundary-pushing thinking has led McKimens into his own creative territory. “It just came about naturally,” he asserts. “I wasn’t influenced by anyone. I started cutting out drawings and liked how they looked just laying around the room. So instead of gluing them down in other drawings I tried to figure out ways of letting them exist on their own. I always try and push things in subtle ways so they do interesting things when viewed from different angles.”