This monograph brings together nearly a decade of work, combining sculpture, installation, artist's book and writing. More specifically, the publication explores the themes of growth and training within the artist's conceptual practice, through a long interview conducted by writer and curator Dieter Roelstraete.
“Lavender Glass” explores how the subjects of growth and formation develop in Zin Taylor's work into a series of conceptual forms surfacing through investigative elements of inquiry, exchange, and abstraction. Copublished with the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, the monograph gathers nearly a decade of the Canadian artist's multifaceted narrative work across sculpture, installation, artist's books, and writing. A text by Belgian curator and writer Dieter Roelstraete serves as a contextual introduction to a five-day conversation between Roelstraete and Taylor that took place while both were in Chicago. The meandering discussion explores the trail of influence between a work's concept, the language it develops, and the form it produces, as well as the individual pieces or concepts involved; associative links to cooking, music, botany, stones, and the city of Brussels arise along the way. The Belgian graphic designer Boy Vereecken, together with Antoine Begon, developed a sensitive design for the publication, integrating images of Taylor's work into the elongated conversation. The layout functions not only to illustrate the subjects as they are discussed, sometimes literally and other times editorially, but to reflect Taylor's interest in how ideas have a way of developing into visual form as they unfold over a duration—or a discussion.
Zin Taylor (born 1978 in Calgary, Canada, lives and works in Brussels) has become known internationally for his elaborate installations encompassing elements of performance and sculpture along with drawing, printing, and video. Narration is an essential ingredient of much of Taylor's multifaceted work, and his stories are often culled from the undergrowth of popular culture (more specifically underground music scenes) and contemporary art lore. Journalism, research, storytelling: not surprisingly, both the spoken word and the printed word figure prominently in Taylor's practice (the artist himself belonging to a generation of practitioners for whom a definite facility with language, both on a theoretical and literary level, has become a key aspect of artistic identity), and many of his installations have also been accompanied by publications and/or artist books.
