Bret Slater & Raphael Taylor

BRETT SLATER

It was a moment that deserved to be captured. Fast friends, otherwise the mood was bleak. A shared interest in an early ‘00s rock band: the re-emergence of rock & roll he said, or something like that. Can I draw you he asked?

Facebook friends – link to my Instagram and I’ll follow you back on Twitter.

“I hold on to CDs because I like the objects; I like the albums and the cover artwork and I just like the thing. These little objects. Fuck man.”

Erratic driving. His energy was the only real thing in a convention center filled with stale art & promises. God how you wished this was all pre-9/11.

It was early Gus Van Sant and the late ‘90s. In a place where art was dead we were alive again. The market could crash and burn and we didn’t care. We had these little objects. We had a shared interest in the same rock and roll band. We had the same desire to get out and not talk about it. It was Texas but the Texas we wanted was filled with dusty roads and beat up cars and cigarettes and the idea that we would live forever. It was a romance and it was life and we were living it.

Bret Slater (b. 1987) lives and works in New York, NY. He has participated in numerous group, solo and two-person shows around the world. This is his first solo show with the gallery.

RAPHAEL TAYLOR: CS-B

Louis B. James is pleased to present CS-B, a solo exhibition by Raphael Taylor, which consists of a single custom-made sculpture comprising a ceiling within the gallery's basement exhibition space. Taylor's work makes reference to objects and larger systems that have their origins in mass-production. Fashioned out of galvanized steel, this work's topological form is an iteration of a typical, commercially available suspended ceiling system. Like the manufactured ceiling itself, the sculpture features a parallel grid that spans the room from wall to wall.  Through the addition of this familiar routinizing form, Taylor shifts our perspective within the room, playing with perceived light and space.

Raphael Taylor (b. 1982) lives and works in New York, NY. He has exhibited in group and solo shows, most recently at Rear Window in Harlem. This is his first solo show with the gallery.