Marquee Projects is thrilled to present Instructions for Remaining Upright, our fourth solo exhibition of artist Taylor Anton White. An opening reception was held on Friday, June 30, from 5-7pm.

Many of us have become familiar with the complex, sewn, and assembled collage paintings of Taylor Anton White. In recent years White’s practice has grown to include the immediacy of simply drawing directly onto the canvas, and recent exhibitions in South Korea and Germany have presented rambunctious drawing/paintings of cars and houses in all sorts of contorted positions. This exhibition marks yet another exciting turn in the artist’s work: depictions of humans on edge, crying out for attention and resolution.

Working extremely quickly with stark black oil stick on white painted canvas, in a purposely self-imposed state of compressed emotion and time, White engages in a performance of compulsively sketching dichotomized cartoon images of human expressions, recalling multiple exposures from photography or sequences of frames from gonzo animation design. This time-pressure causes errors – but there are no erasures, no corrections. And our brain tries to parse and understand the complicated faces depicted in the work, but there is a mind-bending moment: Are we witnessing states of simultaneous meltdown and ecstasy? Crisis and bliss? And, White asks, are these lived polarities a normal part of everyday existence on this planet, a continuation of timeless uncertainties? Or are we on the cusp of some monumental, reconciliatory transition? Are we at the edge of a cliff, headed for apocalypse; or are we about to soar upward into transcendence? Does it even matter, or is it all just laughably absurd?

Taylor Anton White's work gives form to fleeting memories and the dormant mania crawling beneath the carpet of the western home. These images recount crisis and triumph, momentum and confinement, lust and low-altitude bombing. Finding stillness in the recording of arguments within the process of painting and drawing, He returns to his childhood freezer filled with popsicles and secret passageways.