Fraser Taylor’s work in “Orchid/Dirge,” an overdue thirteen-year survey, perfectly captures the transactional relationship between viewer and art object—the artist’s surrogate body. A “Missed Connections” personals clipping implanted in the painted collage of a man’s deconstructed black suit, titled Bulk, 2002, seems like an artifact of desired emotional engagement. Metaphors of touch proliferate throughout the show, through various textures such as those in the jagged wood-and-wire sculpture series “Black Flowers,” 2009–11, along with drawings of floating phantom limbs and penises in prints and collages. These and other fragmentary body imagery repeat irregularly across the show’s surfaces like anxious patterns or gestures of creative metabolism.
Too much affect, for Taylor, is dangerous; it invites pain. Every time I view Taylor’s artwork I am reminded of something he once told me: He witnessed a woman’s accidental decapitation by bus on a Chicago street. It’s not a story I can unhear, and I imagine it’s not a thing he can unsee. Being a witness to mortality means you do what you can, which is to fill in the blank with empathy. Most of Taylor’s work is painted or inked black, except the newest piece, which recalls his early career with the Cloth, a collaborative textile design group from London. “Scalloway,” from 2015, is a series of screen prints on sewn canvas completed after a recent return from his native Scotland. Surprisingly, their back sides reveal colorful panels, as if the retrospective visit has encouraged Taylor to turn a new corner.
