{"id":90544,"date":"2025-02-18T15:21:35","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T22:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=90544"},"modified":"2025-03-17T06:49:22","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T13:49:22","slug":"cordell-taylors-evolving-practice-invites-new-ways-of-seeing-space-and-structure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/cordell-taylors-evolving-practice-invites-new-ways-of-seeing-space-and-structure\/","title":{"rendered":"Cordell Taylor\u2019s Evolving Practice Invites New Ways of Seeing Space and Structure"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Cordell Taylor’s “Point of Transition” at the Dumke Arts Plaza in Ogden. Image by Geoff Wichert.<\/p><\/div>\n

In Europe, art enthusiasts occasionally come across dismantled fragments of some major, long-gone work of art in a museum or gallery. Often these are surviving parts of some noteworthy, even famous architectural commission from a building that was subsequently damaged in war or otherwise demolished. This might include the corner pendentives of a painted ceiling, for example, hung high in the gallery in order to help in the mental reconstruction of what they might have looked like when in their glory. To see one of Cordell Taylor\u2019s occasional gallery exhibitions bears a certain analogy to this experience. This is because Taylor\u2019s abstract sculptures can be appreciated in the absence of context, like a model held in the hand, even when they are full-sized, but it\u2019s worth recalling that they achieve their best effects when seen in a place and space they were intended and designed to occupy and respond to.<\/h4>\n

Such thoughts inevitably come to mind when walking around and through Points of Transition<\/i>, Taylor\u2019s current installation of five medium-to-large works, outdoors in the snow and under winter skies in Ogden\u2019s Dumke Arts Plaza, adjacent to the OCA complex. Although some effort is required of the audience, this project allows the alert and willing viewer to visually juxtapose the Taylors with their temporary settings, which range from meandering sidewalks and railings to surrounding, sky-gobbling towers and decaying brick walls. While none of these effects were envisioned in advance by the artist, they do contribute a new element: the opportunity to create one’s own accidental collaborations between the sculpture and its surroundings.<\/h4>\n