David Taylor: Frontier/Frontera
February 14 to May 31, 2009
Curator: Mónica Ramírez—Montagut
New Mexico-based artist David Taylor’s exhibition Frontier/Frontera at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum offers an inside look at life on the United States/Mexico Border.
The exhibition—which will remain on view through May 31, 2009—features approximately one dozen striking photographs, as well as three video works, which afford viewers a real-time glimpse into the complex dynamics of the region.
In Frontier/Frontera, Taylor explores the different notions of the border as understood by Americans and Mexicans. In America the frontier harks back to pioneer days and western movies, to a desert that holds a utopian promise of constant renewal, whereas the Mexican notion of the border is a physical limit that needs to be crossed.
Aldrich curator Mónica Ramírez—Montagut says, “This exhibition does not present the familiar fraught image of the immigrant, but offers images to which we generally do not have access, such as those made while accompanying Border Patrol agents during their field operations. Through the gaze of the agents, Taylor documents both the complexity of the border and the routine work of patrolling it. His photographs depict the agent’s working spaces, their surveillance methods, and the landscapes in which they work.”
Taylor’s work falls within the transition from the idealized representation of the American West to the contemporary landscape of the U.S./Mexico borderlands. For him, “the West is still most often portrayed as a compilation of its romantic icons: grand vistas, rugged cowboys, savage natives, and lonely cacti” and “the ongoing settlement of the western states is, in part, fueled by our belief in those icons.”
Taylor’s images call forth those associations, presenting the open desert, the “heroic” mission of the cowboy—updated to the DEA or Border Patrol agent—the architectural signs of abandonment, masculinity, and the battle between civilization and barbarism now cast in terms of legality and illegality. However, he also argues that the border occupies a different role in that it “currently exists as a militarized zone in our national consciousness: it is a state of politicized reality that is in direct conflict with our idealized image of the West.” To this end, part of his work also reveals that conflict.
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David Taylor: Frontier/Frontera
David Taylor, Mount Cristo Rey (from the series A Measure of Faith and a Line in the Sand, 2006-09), 2007
Courtesy of the artist and Stoots Fine Photography, Portland
David Taylor: Frontier/Frontera
David Taylor, Procession (from the series A Measure of Faith and a Line in the Sand, 2006-09), 2008
Courtesy of the artist and Stoots Fine Photography, Portland
David Taylor: Frontier/Frontera
David Taylor, Office Work (shared desk), TX (from the series Working the Line, 2007), 2007
Courtesy of the artist and Stoots Fine Photography, Portland
The Artist:
David Taylor is an Associate Professor at New Mexico State University, where he has taught photography since 1999. He previously held teaching positions at Linfield College, McMinnville, OR (1996-99) and Oregon College of Art and Craft, Portland (1996-97). Taylor earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University. His photo constructions, multimedia installations, and artist’s books have been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions at Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso; El Paso Museum of Art; SF Camerawork, San Francisco; Society for Contemporary Photography, Kansas City, MO; and Northlight Gallery at Arizona State University, Tempe. His work is in a number of permanent collections, including Columbia College Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Washington State Arts Commission, Olympia; University of Washington, Seattle; and El Paso Museum of Art. In 2004 he was awarded a major public commission by the U.S. General Services Administration for artwork to be installed in a new federal courthouse to be built in Las Cruces, New Mexico, with an anticipated completion date of 2009. In 2006 Taylor was awarded a commission to produce artwork for a newly constructed U.S. Border Patrol Station in Van Horn, TX; the project was completed and the building opened in spring 2007. Previous awards include a residency from the Nexus Press at the Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art (2001) and a private commission for the El Paso law firm of Ryan and Sanders, LLP (2003). Taylor’s ongoing examination of the U.S./Mexico border is currently supported by a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
The Aldrich is supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
David Taylor, Procession (from the series A Measure of Faith and a Line in the Sand, 2006-09), 2008
Courtesy of the artist and Stoots Fine Photography, Portland
