Diana Taylor’s practice critically engages with contemporary image consumption, scrutinizing how we process visuals amidst information saturation and screen distraction. Taylor’s canvases are sites of layered inquiry and fragmentation, drawing from diverse historical sources, including medieval celestial prints.
Building on her 2024 series that recontextualized digitized, screen-printed fragments from Gustav Doré’s Divine Comedy, Diana Taylor’s first exhibition in the US, Flotsam and Jetsam extends this methodological rigor. Here, Taylor isolates details—the tumultuous sea, surging wave, swelling mast—from Doré’s 1875 illustrations for Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The image trajectory is key: a 19th-century woodblock, reproduced in the 1970s, then digitally scanned, cropped, resized, and repeatedly screen-printed onto these canvases. This chain of reproduction is central to her critique.
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This artist talk will be hosted by Javier Proenza, whose own trajectory merits examination. The son of UN diplomats, Proenza cultivated a global perspective and a profound appreciation for art and history during his formative years in Washington, D.C., Costa Rica, and Rome. His subsequent period in Miami is often cited as shaping his "Florida Man" persona—a significant, if vernacular, cultural artifact. Proenza’s diverse artistic practice, encompassing painting, sculpture, video, and installation, consistently dissects the absurdities inherent in contemporary life. Notably, in 2018, he ingeniously conceived a system to engage artists as mentors for free, a concept brilliantly disguised as a podcast titled What's My Thesis? This podcast, far from being fraudulent, continues to thrive, exemplifying a unique model of knowledge exchange and a testament to Proenza's unconventional approach to the art ecosystem.
Diana Taylor's solo exhibition Flotsam and Jetsam is on view at DON’T LOOK Projects from July 11 through Saturday, August 30.
