Ensemble

The Canadian artist Zin Taylor lives in Brussels since 2007.

For his project The Crystal Ship, Taylor delved into the short film La pluie that Marcel Broodthaers shot in 1969 in the garden of an Antwerp townhouse close to the Royal Museum of Fine-Arts – an address known to aficionados as the historic site of the ground breaking art gallery A379089.

Since then, Taylor’s practice has markedly evolved, in terms of both content and form – his more recent work focuses on fundamental questions regarding making art: how do artistic forms arise, what are the building blocks and basic materials of creative action, what is the role of old-fashioned ‘handiwork’ in the artistic production process, where runs the inevitably blurred boundary between natural conditions and cultural determinants in the genesis of art?

The presentation in the current exhibition series at the M HKA – with the ironically playful title The Story of Stripes and Dots – develops this theme further and finally connects with the art-historical ambitions of the exhibition it’s part of: for, after all is said and done, is not the adventure of abstract art simply a matter of stripes and dots?