McColl Center Studio Artist Taylor Lee launching “trash renaissance” with YARD SALE at SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2023
YARD SALE exhibition open Feb 15-19 during internationally recognized art fair in Los Angeles
Charlotte, NC – McColl Center announced that YARD SALE, an exhibition by McColl Center Studio Artist Taylor Lee, will open from February 15-19 as a part of the 2023 SPRING/BREAK Art Show in Los Angeles.
SPRING/BREAK Art Show is an internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical and historic spaces to activate and challenge the traditional cultural landscape of the art market. YARD SALE is curated by McColl Center Vice President + Creative Director Jonell Logan and Artist-in-Residence Alumna Janet Loren Hill.
“Participating in SPRING/BREAK Art Show has been a goal of Taylor’s for years. We are honored to support them in this much anticipated moment, and we are also thrilled to bring the McColl Center creative community to Los Angeles for this much-loved event in the contemporary art world,” said Logan.
YARD SALE installation detail,
Taylor Lee, mixed-media, 2023.
About YARD SALE
Lee, a genderqueer multidisciplinary artist, is launching the trash renaissance with their second iteration of YARD SALE, meticulously crafted for the SPRING/BREAK Art Show audience. For the “art fair that never quits,” Lee flips the script of the typical “fine art booth” by transfiguring the space into a yard sale complete with kitschy signage, over-trampled lawn grass, and an open barter system of negotiable prices.
Here at YARD SALE, you as the viewer and driver of the spectacle have power over the price. Barter back and forth with Taylor and their surrogates for intricately beaded 90s-00s tabloid covers (the very same they devoured as a child), a bird bath of discarded ceramic cigarette butts, and bedazzled “dad” hats ready to announce your guilty pleasure. Collect chewed paper (translated into bourgeois-ese as papier-mâché) hot dogs, lightly-used guitars, and flamboyant flamingo lawn art. Even the papier-mâché wall tiles (made of bloated credit card statements, super sale coupons and debt relief offers Lee receives in the mail) can be haggled for. You can rest easy knowing your final purchase contributes to the ultimate deterioration of the space.
YARD SALE is completed by its site within SPRING/BREAK Art Show, a successful art fair and locus of class clash. Viewers can choose to peruse Lee’s nostalgia naked for all on the lawn, contribute to the noise of poverty by drawing on the “sidewalk tiles” at the entrance of the yard, and/or barter for “garbage” and help support the trash renaissance. Like Oldenburg’s, Store, Adrian Piper’s, The Probable Trust Registry, and Andrea Fraser’s Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk, Lee’s YARD SALE tethers the viewer to the work, tugging and tying that umbilical cord into knots of complicity that the humor of the pieces may have initially masked. They ask, “How much are you willing to pay, today?”
Artist Bio
Taylor Lee (b. 1991, they/them) is a genderqueer new media artist and curator who loves to mix kitsch and creepiness for comically grotesque results. As an Absurdist, Taylor has been told that they are like a depressed Pee Wee Herman. Taylor transforms lowbrow, banal materials such as junk mail and tabloids into sculpture to subvert and parody all the stupid s(tuff) around us. Their work dissects themes of hyperreality, consumerism, and an overwhelming sense of emptiness. Taylor is a McColl Center Studio Artist, and their work has been shown in numerous galleries and art spaces around the United States including Redux Contemporary, Charleston; Goodyear Arts, Charlotte; and McColl Center, Charlotte. Taylor’s curatorial project GARBAGE PERSON which was installed at Gallery C3, was nominated for Queen City Nerve’s Best Art Exhibit of 2022.
About McColl Center and The Studios at McColl Center
McColl Center is an acclaimed artist residency and contemporary art space in Charlotte, North Carolina. McColl Center believes art thrives when artists do and serves the community as a hub for creative inspiration and support. McColl Center offers subsidized artist studios, modern equipment and tools, entrepreneurship programs, and 5,000 SF of gallery space to exhibit and sell work as tangible commitments to artists first.
The Studios at McColl Center is a studio rental program designed to build a creative community and support emerging local artists in the region. The Studios at McColl Center are subsidized thanks to the generosity of Bank of America, Cheryl Kaufman, and Charlotte is Creative.