Visiting Artist Colloquium: Bill Saylor

Bill Saylor’s work is distinguished by his merging of explosive, gestural abstraction with a comprehensive personal iconography, revealing an anthropogenic concern and interest in natural history, weather patterns, and marine biology. Using spray paint, charcoal, and oil paint on canvas, Saylor splatters and scrawls a cast of recurring motifs exploring the significance of underground subcultures and the environment. Drawing and assemblage serve as crucial and enduring facets of Saylor’s practice, taking the form of graphite and charcoal on paper and panel, and sculptures made from salvaged materials and automotive parts. Saylor’s work recycles and reframes elements from graf ti, cave painting, and industrial production while mining the legacy of both American and European expressionism. The resulting effect amounts to an eco-scavenger sensibility, where images and surfaces are built up from the excess waste and detritus of our culture. Saylor’s post-apocalyptic beachcomber aesthetic reminds one of a world where humanity exists amid a fragile tension of creation and destruction and that our human-built culture is but one element of a much larger and complex ecosystem.

Saylor has held solo exhibitions at Magenta Plains, New York; Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris; Leo Koenig Inc., New York; The Journal Gallery, Brooklyn; and Loyal Gallery, Stockholm. Two-person shows include Air Like Wine with Rob Mcleish at Neon Parc, Brunswick, AU; Bill Saylor & Josh Smith at Hiromi Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Bill Saylor & Aidas Bareikis at Shoot The Lobster, New York, New York; Bill Saylor & Donald Baechler at Makebish, New York, New York; and Mason Saltarrelli and Bill Saylor at Shrine, New York, New York. Saylor was included in Animal Farm at the Brant Foundation and has participated in group exhibitions at Venus Over Manhattan, New York; CANADA, New York; Martos Gallery, Los Angeles; MIER Gallery, Los Angeles; Ceysson & Bénétière, Luxembourg and Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco. Saylor’s work was also included in Contemporary Painting curated by Alex Katz at the Colby College Museum of Art in 2004. In 2010, Saylor collaborated on the zine “Ho Bags” with Harmony Korine and he was an artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Saylor lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. billsaylor.com