15 Carlos Place, London W1K 2EX T +44 20 7409 3344 mail@timothytaylor.com timothytaylor.com

Sean Scully Horizon

2 November – 17 December 2016

Timothy Taylor is pleased to present Sean Scully, Horizon, an exhibition of new paintings from the Landline series; a body of work that has preoccupied Scully since 2013. These works will be exhibited alongside a selection of 26 drawn-notes from Scully‘s archive, where text and image coexist – often with equal weighting – offering an insight into the articulation of the larger scale works. 

For over 40 years, Scully has consistently explored his unique language of abstraction, which applies North American-influenced expression through the ocular of European art history. A richness of colour and pared down forms is fused with a gestural yet emotional abstraction. For Scully, a particular concern has consistently been the quest for expressive power within the application of a deliberately restricted repertoire of motifs. The modular forms which Scully deploys as units – abutted, inset and interlocked – succeed in developing inter-relationships within the surfaces of his paintings, generating both physical and psychological tensions. The catalyst in charging Scully‘s formal rigour with emotional content is the application of liberated brushwork, which injects meaning into even the liminal spaces, where forms and colours meet. As the artist states, “at some time in the evolution of the surface, something more emotional has to happen.” 

Informed by perpetual travel, and a personal connection to landscape and nature, the Landline paintings address a preoccupation with the horizon, which has been reduced down to its purest form without the support or resistance of the vertical. By removing one axis, the other loses its reference point and becomes capable of suggesting a sense of infinity across the unilateral plane. 

“I was always looking at the horizon line, at the way the end of the sea touches the beginning of the sky, the way the sky presses down on to the sea, and the way that line (that relationship) is painted... I try to paint this, this sense of the elemental coming together side by side, stacked in horizon lines endlessly beginning and ending…” – Sean Scully.  

It is hard not to read the sense of infinite space in

Scully‘s Landline paintings within a contemporary context, and with an echo of the endless scroll we experience through various information channels on screens. Blocks of content arranged on top of each other, sometimes with prosaic or aesthetic objectives, but often as a chance display of data. As with Scully‘s employment of horizontal bands, each contingent functions in its own right, but the tensions exist through the relationships with the surrounding composition. 

In our highly mediatised age, the language of abstraction seems to be entering a new space within our daily vernacular. When technology encounters a glitch, or is resting on a loading page, the image will often obscure momentarily, leaving us with an abstracted, pregnant, pause. These fault lines in technology, and the disrupted visuals that they offer, are symptomatic of a transitional moment before something significant occurs. Again, there is a parallel here with Scully‘s mode of abstraction, whereby macrocosmic themes of architecture, landscape, literature and light have their essence distilled and suspended in paint. Ultimately, what we experience in these paintings is a caesura, which offers a portal through which the infinite can be contemplated. 

Accompanying the exhibition is a new publication designed by Zak Group, with a recently commissioned essay by Kelly Grovier.

Sean Scully was born in Dublin in 1945, and currently lives between New York, Berlin and Barcelona. Scully was elected a Royal Academician in 2013. He has been shortlisted for the Turner Prize twice, in 1989 and in 1993.

Scully’s work is held in numerous public collections including, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth; Tate, London; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K20K21, Düsseldorf; Albertina, Vienna; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; and Instituto Valencia d’Arte Modern, Valencia.

Sean Scully Horizon 2 November – 17 December 2016

Sean ScullyLandline Green Green, 2015

Oil on aluminium85 1/6 × 75 3/16 in. 216 × 191 cmT0010589

Sean ScullyLandline Blue Veined, 2016

Oil on linen85 5/8 × 76 3/8 in. 209 × 194 cmT0010568

Sean ScullyLandline Darkness, 2016

Oil on linen85 × 75 in. 215.9 × 190.5 cmT0010328

Sean ScullyLandline Bloom, 2016

Oil on linen85 × 75 in. 215.9 × 190.5 cmT0010569

Sean ScullyLandline Red Veined, 2016

Oil on aluminium85 1/6 × 75 3/16 in. 216 × 191 cmT0010475

Sean ScullyLandline Lost-Land, 2016

Oil on aluminium85 × 75 in. 216 × 191 cmT0010773

Sean ScullyUntitled (Tower), 2015

Corten Steel108 × 36 × 36 in. 274.3 × 91.4 × 91.41 cmT0010326

Albright, Knox Gallery, Buffalo, USA Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA Arts Council of Great Britain, London, UK Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia Banque Europeene d’Investissement, Luxembourg BAWAG Foundation, Vienna, Austria Bayrische Staatsgemaeldesammlung, Munich, Germany Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris, France The British Council, London, UK Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain Ceolfrith Art Center, Sunderland, UK Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, USA Chemical Bank, New York, New York, USA Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA Consejeria de cultura, Santander, Spain Contemporary Arts Society, London, UK Council of National Academic Awards, London, UK Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, USA Denver ArtMuseum, Colorado, USA The DG Bank Collection, Frankfurt, Germany Eastern Arts Association, Cambridge, UK Ecole d’Arts Plastiques, Chatelierault, France Eli Broad Family Foundation, Santa Monica, California, USA First Bank Minneapolis, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA La Foundation Edelman, Lausanne, Switzerland Foundation Stiftelesen Focus-Boras, Sweden Fundacio La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain Galleria D’Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy Gallery of Modern Art Laszlo Vass Collection, Veszprem, Hungary Grafische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, Austria Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, Austria Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York, USA High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Selected Public and Private Collections

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., USA Hotel des Arts, Toulon, France Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, UK Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany Kunstammlung, Nordrhein, Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany Kunst und Museumsverein Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, upon, Tyne, UK Leicestershire Educational Authority, Leicester, UK Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, UK Mellon Bank, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, USA Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas, Venezuela Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Monterrey, Mexico Musee d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Museo de Arte Moderno, Col. Bosques de Chaultepec, Mexico Musee du Dessin et de l’Estampe Originale, Gravelines, France Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Boston Massachusetts, USA Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany Musee de Gravelines, France Musee Jenisch, Vevey, Switzerland Museum Moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA Musee de Val de Marne, Ivry, sur, seine, France Museum Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern, Germany Museum fur Sub, Kultur, Berlin, Germany Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya, Japan National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA National Gallery of Victoria, Felton Bequest, Melbourne, Australia Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz, Linz, Austria Northern Arts Association, Newcastle, upon, Tyne, UK Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida, USA Paine Webber Group, Inc., New York, USA Phillip Morris Inc., New York, USA The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., USA Power Institute of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia

Ruhr Universitat Bochum, Germany Saastamoisien Saatio, Helsinki, Finland Sala Rekalde, Bilbao, Spain Sammlung Essl-Vienna, Austria Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, USA Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. USA Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California, USA Sara Hilden Art Museum, Tampere, Finland Stattsgalerie, Stuttgard, Germany Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany The St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, USA The Tate Gallery, London, UK Tokyo International Forum, Tokyo, Japan Ulster Museum, Belfast, Ireland University of Limerick, Ireland Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK Zentrum fur Kunst und Medien Technologie, Karlsruhe, Germany

15 Carlos Place, London W1K 2EX T +44 20 7409 3344 mail@timothytaylor.com timothytaylor.com

Sean Scully Horizon

2 November – 17 December 2016