Timothy Taylor

Timothy Taylor Gallery is delighted to announce a presentation of new work by Sean Scully from 28 May – 3 July 2010. The first time that Scully has exhibited new work in London since 2006, this exhibition runs concurrently with an important survey of his work from the 1980s at the Leeds Art Gallery until 8 August 2010.

The significance of Scullyʼs contribution to the history of abstraction since the 1970s is increasingly understood and appreciated while the artistʼs rigorous dedication to abstract painting, infused with both physicality and spirituality, continues unabated.

This exhibition contains many new additions to Scullyʼs Wall of Light series, shown to great acclaim in a dedicated exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2006. This series, which draws its inspiration from the colours and forms the artist observed during important visits to Mexico in the early 1980s, is characterised by the luminosity of the palette and the rich and subtle layering of colour. It is these qualities, which, according to Kelly Grovier writing recently in the Times Literary Supplement, call to mind the colourist Titian or the atmospherics of Turner, rather than more predictably the abstract legacies of Pollock and Rothko.

Wall of Light Temple, 2009, demonstrates how Scully suffuses his rectangular brick-like forms not only with warmth and energy, but also with the barely visible layers of paint beneath, thereby connecting the painting both with the tangible world of vision and tactility, but also the invisible world of metaphor and indeed faith. As Kelly Grovier observes, these paintings are ʻworks of dense translucence, like blocks of amber elbowing bricks of peat… their power builds geologically from below, from the compressed strata of texture and colour.ʼ Further effects are gained by Scullyʼs recent adoption of aluminium as a ground instead of traditional linen or canvas. This has tangibly increased the glossiness and luxuriance of the painted surface, and is evident in works such as Wall of Light Pale Yellow Pink, 2009.

His recent retrospective, Constantinople or The Sensual Concealed, The Imagery of Sean Scully has toured during 2009 and 2010 from MKM, Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art, Duisburg, Germany, to The Ulster Museum, Belfast; Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen, Germany; and the Kunstsammlungen, Chemnitz, Germany. Other recent major solo presentations have been held at Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA; Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain; Musée dʼArt Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole, St Etienne, France;MACRO al Mattatoio, Rome, Italy; The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., USA; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, USA; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, USA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

Scullyʼs work is held by numerous public collections worldwide including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth; Tate, London; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K20K21, Düsseldorf; the Albertina, Vienna; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; and Instituto Valencia dʼArte Modern, Valencia.

Sean Scully lives and works in New York, Barcelona and Munich. This will be his sixth solo exhibition to be held at Timothy Taylor Gallery.