About

Taylor William McKimens grew up in a tiny sun-scorched, desert border town in the Imperial Valley of Southern California, where printed images, cartoons and comic books served as the entirety of his childhood art awareness. A cartoon-fueled visual language took root early and has developed over the years into a distinct and immediately identifiable folk-pop  take on contemporary art making. The work is jam packed with clashing concepts in every conceivable form. Deep folk sincerity infuses all absurdity and humor. A blue collar respect for craftsmanship exists in a bizarre harmony with recklessness and psychedellic chaos. Unironic and romantic expressionist gestures stumble and kick over the bucket of paint, mashing Franz Kline's studied splatters with the actual purest forms of expressionism, the stupid accident, sheer laziness, and just total disregard for visual aesthetics. Airborn blobs of paint, both cartoon and actual, land disrespectfully on hours worth of painstaking draftsmanship, and any attempted repairs to the damage are to be carried out on ketamine with all the wrong colors. The dramatic and sublime beauty of nature is noted in the most decrepit and abused cactus or houseplant, and in every smashed beer can, every wayward flip flop and every acid pink mud puddle. Amateur cartoons and bootleg pop branding have been printed on products that get abandoned near, or are blown by wind up against prickly pear bushes or some other landmark in the general vicinity, creating piles that make it clear that nature is uninterested in any distinction between still life and landscape. It's a still life landscape, a cosmic Dada collage or assemblage, or a sculpture or installation of the American Dream. Pop art in folk art on trashy art, in a cartoon. It's extreme chaos and it's serene. There are no rules. No difference between drawing, painting, and installation. 2-D, 3-D, HOW-D partner! They're vibrant, poetic, idiotic, clashing and loving testimonials about the disorienting beauty of the contemporary American West. 

 Born in 1976, McKimens studied at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. From the it was direct to New York where he lived   until a recent return west to Los Angeles where he currently lives.

He has exhibited internationally in both gallery and museum contexts, created a significant amount of work through private commissions, and  is included in numerous prominent collections. 

Select solo exhibitions include Deitch Projects, The Hole, and Art Rock at Rockefeller Center in New York; the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan; Dio Horia in Mykonos, Greece; Studio d'Arte Raffaelli in Trento, Italy; Galerie Zürcher in Paris, France; and Loyal Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden.

Select group exhibitions include PS1 MoMA, Deitch Projects, The Hole, The Journal Gallery, White Columns, and the Neuberger Museum in New York; the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece; the MACRO Museum in Rome, Italy; the Garage Center in Moscow, Russia; ARoS Kunstmuseum in Aarhus, Denmark; Portugal Arte 10 in Lisbon, Portugal; Peres Projects in Berlin, Germany; as well as the Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design, the Riverside Art Museum, and The Hole LA in California.