GLOBAL COLLECTORS ART PRIZE | MASTERS DEFINING THE FUTURE OF ART

Biography

Tim Taylor is an artist who attended the Claremont Graduate School of Art. He took a fast MA to leave an MFA program and study medicine at George Washington University when he realised that the student loan debt would have to be paid somehow. Studio art sure as hell wasn't going to do it, and he at least learned that much in school.

After his first bankruptcy, brought on by over 3 million dollars of education debt from buying a couple of big lemons, Taylor went to the Johnson Atelier as an apprentice when it was still pouring bronze during the time of Segal's "Breadline." He was one of the commissioned sculptors working with Andrzej Pityński on "The Partisans." But debt would disqualify Taylor from almost every job, and he left the USA to live in the Northern Mariana Islands in 2008. From outside the USA, art had breathing room, and Taylor began to exhibit internationally and publish.

Tim Taylor was a three-time resident of the Elea Arte Club in Ascea, Italy, and spent a month at the International Ceramics Center in Hungary. His art has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Europe and the UAE. This year, Taylor exhibited at the Louvre Carrousel's "Art Shopping," and a collection of his work is making the rounds with Parcus Gallery of Austria and Brazil. 2026 has also brought awards from the Effetto Arte Gallery of Sicily, which is exhibiting "Silver Ball" at the Barcelona Museum of Modern Art at the Biennale.

A line-up of art exhibitions and residencies in Europe was cancelled during the US virus campaign, and Taylor was relocated by lockdown back to the USA in 2020. He now has a studio inside the USA, and artwork is slowing down again, consistent with life on the treadmill. The experience has cast a new light on art's absolute value. Several artworks that were planned before the pandemic somehow don't seem applicable. Highly perfected work can't compete with AI. Taylor is returning to works that satisfy his own pleasure principle in the making of them.

Artist Statement

The artist's desire for their work to live on after they die meets the collector at a certain intersection in time. The collector's time is leaven for investment. The artist wants his fame and immortality. There is a symbiosis at work. But the greatest artists in history never see the day of their peak fame. And the popular artists of our time fade like a color photograph.

If you stay alive and keep making it long enough, they'll eventually see it. But the day you plan your work for the show is the day you compromise. Big stars have to watch what they say. The internet is censored. Artists are pieces of work that agents collect for their shelves to show off to their friends. You can't be mindful of these things when it comes time to wet a brush or sharpen your blades.

From the perspective of time, "process," "discovery," "experiment," and even "create" have become foul references to science and the educators who proved themselves to be systematic pawns in the pandemic. Even the jingles of psychology, "primary process," finding the "child," and "play," are polluted vernacular. We are entering a new era of post-post-post-post everything they pitch. What's left?

And that is my present motivation. I'm past using art as a vehicle for their values and histories. I'm not looking to find anything. I accept it's all been done and better than me. I don't want to compete with the movie producers' museums with Norman Rockwells and Baggys. What remains is a very small piece of a certain feeling of being who I am when I make it.

You do your own diligence when you buy art. I don't guarantee any of it, except maybe that I did it. They've got plenty of art heroes. You're not going to blast it off into orbit like a Musk car and take a picture of it from outer space. You realise when they've taken it out of your league. They own the turf. But I still make art anyway.

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