Nüart Gallery presents “Symmetry,” a solo exhibition featuring new work by Sunny Taylor. The exhibition will run Arpil 25th through May 11th 2025 with an opening reception on Friday, April 25th, from 5:00 - 7:00 pm.
This body of work reflects Sunny Taylor’s ongoing investigation into geometric abstraction, the built environment, and the emotional tensions that arise between structure and spontaneity. In Symmetry, Taylor re-engages painting’s geometric traditions while pushing into new terrain through intuitive mark-making and complex surface treatments.
Drawing from architectural forms and manmade environments, Taylor’s work explores the interplay between visual order and the messier, more instinctive realities of human experience. “The imagery that inspires my work is always manmade, most often architectural in nature,” she says. “But what I really care about is reflecting upon this incredibly fascinating and complex human experience.”
Taylor’s paintings embody a built, almost sculptural aesthetic. Her compositions are the result of calculated maneuvers—layering, sanding, scraping, isolating shapes, and then editing with precision. She works with tools such as razor blades, tape, and squeegees, often avoiding traditional brushes in favor of more rigid implements. “I use a razor blade and tape to isolate shapes, and I push and pull, scrape and move paint across those spaces,” she says. “The process keeps me continually engaged in the endeavor of art making.”
Taylor is particularly interested in the visual residue left on aging surfaces—on street corners, in alleyways, and in the liminal spaces where disparate materials and aesthetics meet. These references inform her process, which involves disrupting symmetry and then resolving visual conflicts, echoing the push-and-pull of urban environments shaped by time, repair, and human intervention.
Color in Taylor’s work emerges intuitively. Early layers of paint are laid down without a plan, using leftover pigments across freshly gessoed panels. Through this spontaneous beginning, she discovers direction, often refining the palette to emphasize a single dominant hue. “I am constantly recognizing my weaknesses in working with color,” she shares, “and am striving to broaden my use of variety and nuance.”
While texture and mark-making drive the process, Taylor is also acutely aware of compositional impact. “There needs to be a payoff both up close and from a distance,” she explains. “Sometimes I have to paint over details I love in order to let the image breathe.”
The works in this exhibition began—or in some cases ended—with simple symmetrical frameworks. This structural starting point allowed Taylor to work more intuitively with color and texture, transforming symmetry from a constraint into a springboard for risk-taking. “Humans have an innate preference for order, harmony, and balance,” she says. “Visual symmetry helps express those complex and profound notions—it fulfills and reminds us of our inherent longings.”
In Symmetry, Taylor creates a visual language in which harmony and discord, construction and deconstruction, and question and resolution coexist in every piece.
