Alison Elizabeth Taylor’s intricately crafted, marquetry hybrid images of friends and family at James Cohan Gallery picture an array of pleasures that include a tropical hotel bar, a young woman playing guitar on the front steps of a house and friends enjoying time together. The first piece in the show – an image of a cactus created by collaging together thin pieces of wood veneer and other materials and titled ‘Decision Fatigue’ – introduces her technique and points to the unending possibilities for choosing and creating images out of the variety of materials at her disposal, which include not only wood but photographed and textured material as well as paint. In what feels like Taylor’s most integrated assemblages of materials to date, the artist’s skill is foremost on display (in the tones of Javier and Will’s faces and hair in this image, for example), and the biggest pleasure is not the subject matter but the artist’s skill in rendering it. (On view in Tribeca through June 24th).
