by Philip Taaffe (Artist), Colm Tóibín (Text by (Art/Photo Books)), Enrique Juncosa (Text by (Art/Photo Books))
Philip Taaffe (born 1955) emerged in the 1980s alongside a generation of American painters who breathed new life into abstraction, at a time when it had been somewhat languishing in the wake of Pop art and Minimalism. Heavily layered and often grand in scale, Taaffe's paintings renew abstraction through a meticulous juxtaposition of appropriated symbols and emblems from a multitude of customs and epochs, many of which the artist encounters during his travels through South America, India and the Middle East. Taaffe's art is thus both beautiful and erudite, informed by an encyclopedic knowledge of literature and anthropology. Philip Taaffe: Anima Mundifeatures mixed-media and mostly abstract paintings executed over the past ten years. It includes original texts by Colm T ib n and Enrique Juncosa as well as an interview between Taaffe and David Brody.