TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY ANNOUNCES OTHERWORLDLY: SELECT DRAWINGS
AN EXHIBITION OF DRAWINGS BY STEPHEN TALASNIK
Exhibition Dates: 14 December 2023 – 4 February 2024
JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING - TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY is pleased to present Otherworldly: Select Drawings, our first solo exhibition featuring drawings by New York-based artist Stephen Talasnik, on view December 14th, 2023 through February 4th, 2023. An opening reception will be held Thursday, December 15th, from 5-7 pm. An artist’s talk will be held after the new year, on Thursday, January 11th, from 5-7 pm. The artist will be in attendance. All are welcome.
Featuring a substantive selection of black and white drawings spanning the last twenty-plus years of his career, this exhibition explores the pictorial achievements of an artist who has pushed technical drawing beyond mark making to an experience with, as Lebbeus Woods noted, “this power to fascinate, confound, and reveal.” Through Stephen Talasnik’s hand we experience an adventure into an imagined world at the intersection of drawing and building.
Stephen Talasnik’s drawings explore otherworldly landscape and objects that evoke childhood memories. “If there was ever a moment of divine inspiration, it would be the instance I saw the General Motors’ Futurama exhibition and the Panorama of the City of New York at the 1964 Fair,” said Talasnik. “A lifelong obsession with visionary architecture was established at the Fair and I started doing drawings and sculptures of future cities after wandering through the Pavilions.”
Originally from Philadelphia, Talasnik grew up in an urban neighborhood surrounded by oil refineries, a shipyard, a helicopter factory, and an airport, immersing him in the aesthetics of industrial building. He lived in a house that bordered a local creek, providing him an opportunity to unearth the past as he searched for fossils imbued with fictional narratives. He turned these experiences into a world explored through drawing with pencil and building complex structures from wood.
Talasnik has spent the better part of sixty years inventing the past and envisioning and documenting the future. His work is informed by time travel and myth-making, intrigued with the infrastructure of the urban environment. The work is, as the title of the exhibition indicates, otherworldly, suggesting a moment in time without providing absolute coordinates. Often defined as “Fictional Engineering”, he uses no system of measurement, relying on the aesthetics of intuition and invention.
Working in his Brooklyn studio and ever informed by intuitive engineering and the human form, Talasnik continues to explore the unlimited capacity of the fictional object and landscape. Seduced by a visionary’s mantra, he relies on his personal encyclopedia of experience to define an imagined world that explores the visual capacity of a self-defined beauty. Archeological in nature, the viewer is invited to examine a personalized lexicon; extracting clues but challenged to determine specific identity. Employing pencil or wood, Talasnik’s works must always suggest the unfinished yet complete.
Talasnik attended the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA) where he studied Black and White theory with photographers Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan, who nurtured his passion for drawing. His graduate studies took him to Rome with the Tyler School of Art (MFA) where he drew both the human form and architecture from the Classical environment. After completing his formal studies, Talasnik moved to Tokyo where he spent three years. It was in Tokyo that a fascination with hand building re-emerged after studying the art of bamboo construction. Following his time in Japan, Talasnik spent ten years traveling through Asia, all while commuting to his studio in New York City. These seminal experiences inform Talasnik’s obsession with drawing and building landscapes and objects that defy time or place.
In 2010, Talasnik ventured into the world of land art, and has completed major installations at the Storm King Art Center (NY); the Tippet Rise Art Center (MO); the Denver Botanic Garden (CO); the Russel Wright Design Center (NY); and Architektur Galerie Berlin. Talasnik has maintained ongoing studio investigations while exhibiting internationally. His work has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY); the Albertina (Vienna); the British Museum (London); the National Gallery of Art (DC); the Pompidou Centre (Paris); and the Whitney Museum (NY) among others. Talasnik lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
