Steinholt by Christopher Taylor

Mind Set Art Center is honored to have the Italian curator Monica Dematté again for the debut exhibition of the British photographer Christopher Taylor in Taipei.

Taylor is fond of travelling, however, since the 1980’s he returns again and again to the same destinations at regular intervals, namely Iceland (from where his wife originates), India, and China. From an initial outsider’s perspective, he immerses himself gradually in the culture he renders in order to assimilate those characteristics he most admires, and perhaps would like to see within himself. In this way he attempts to reach into and unravel a place from the emotions he feels. Through his lens, landscape is often used as metaphor, frequently in combination with simple emblematic details, which together find their force as opposites in order to achieve an overall equivalence or parity. Perhaps in this way, conflicting emotions may be resolved. Through humanism and nostalgia he creates a method to return the subject matter to a perceived “source” by simple visual expression.

In the digital era of fast, distracted communication, Taylor continues to shoot with heavy analogue cameras and black-and-white roll film that he develops and prints in his darkroom. The months he spends in Iceland, sometimes exposed to gales and extreme environments, are then followed by long periods back in his darkroom in the South of France where he relives those moments, sealing memories on paper. His Icelandic summers, swathed in boundless light, are thus followed by long periods of self-imposed darkness. Taylor’s work sometimes embodies a tranquil and poetic quality, as the curator Monica Dematté once wrote - The “lack of noise” that pervades the normally crowded, boisterous places the photographer has managed to surprisingly catch during rare moments of quiet desertion, evoke contrasting feelings in the viewer (Silence Is Space, 2010). These images are completely self-contained, clinging to nothing, their very existence producing contexts and meanings. Like hymns to beauty, they call forth emotions and enrich the viewers’ minds.