John Hurrell – 24 June, 2024

The eleven works here presented by Kāryn Taylor at Sanderson continue her passion for translucent tinted surfaces, delicate hazy colour, formal geometry, fastidiously controlled opacity and glowing linearity. Painting-like in that they are flat, mostly rectangular or square, and hang on walls, they are constructions of cast acrylic that manipulate light.

That light seems to be absorbed at the sides only to be then wondrously emitted from the carefully positioned lines at the front. There is something gripping about their glowing facility that holds your attention, as does the mysterious foglike mist that surrounds some internal planar colours.

These contemplative formalist ‘mandalas’ have a soothing restful ambience that placates any agitated mind. The airy geometry and barely detectable hue-soaked traces generate calm in a manner that seems mysterious.

Some works have linear configurations parallel to the picture-plane, hovering in front of the viewer but embedded in the work’s acrylic form—and maybe tilted; others have 3D box or pyramid forms set into the seemingly solid translucent space at an oblique angle, utilising a two vanishing-point perspective.

Despite its understated calming ambience, Taylor’s best work over time seems to create a heightened experiential sensation—an extended moment of continuous bodily pleasure brought on while looking at dynamic linear parts within the artwork. The gazed-upon geometric formations generate a kind of bliss largely induced by the strangeness of the illumination coming from within. This joyfully triumphs over competing distractions—even though it is static.

Some other Taylor projects (like Beacon) use animated filmed geometry with shapes that move in a film loop (pretending initially to embrace stasis) that is projected from a distance onto a wall so its glowing bottom corner is butted onto the apex of converging leaning steel rods. The movement seems to occur in sudden intermittent bursts that take the viewer by surprise. Some such works emphasise changing shape, others line.

Taylor specialises in formalism with mystery. How the cast acrylic forms generate (or absorb and exude) the frontally precise illumination is not really clear in terms of material properties, but that doesn’t matter. Somehow light particles get channelled into subtly incandescent lines that are compelling to behold.

John Hurrell

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