Taylor Chapin | Rest Assured, You Are In Good Hands

Apr 14 - May 11, 2023 ONE | 1955 Julian Avenue
Installation Views
Overview
Working in both oil and acrylic, Taylor Chapin's paintings obscure form through multi-layered, illusory facades. She depicts mundane consumer goods wrapped in patterned fabrics, questioning how value is manufactured and challenging perceptions of reality. In her figurative works, Chapin enshrines anonymous bodies with pattern and color as a way of critiquing the perception of value. In both bodies of work, the distinctive features that construct human and commercial individuation are denied.

In Rest Assured, You Are in Good HandsChapin transforms an unidentifiable body covered completely in camouflage, into pure pattern and form. Painted in one-point perspective, a repetitive paisley background consumes the surroundings of the reclined figure, containing subversive narratives that stir up references to the history of art, culture, and conflict. In the 1960s anti-war movement, paisley became symbolic of the push for peace, and camouflage was often used subversively in Pop Art of the same period. Like these artists that built explored the influence of mass media and rejected social norms, the anonymity of the figure here is used as a nudge toward a collective identity where the body of the liberated individual is free from the constructs of societal rules.

Chapin received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from San Francisco Art Institute, and graduated in 2022 with a Master of Fine Arts at University of California, San Diego. Chapin's work will be featured in a group exhibition at the San Diego Library in May, and will be the subject of a solo exhibition at ICA San Diego in September. Taylor Chapin lives and works in San Diego.
Selected Works