Taylor Marie Prendergast

Taylor Marie Prendergast is a Los Angeles-based painter and performance artist. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Felix Art Fair, Dan Graham 3.0, Over the Influence, Chateau Marmont, Taschen Books, Doverstreet Market and Franco Moragrega. She has collaborated with artists such as Jason Al-Taan, Nick Harwood, SOPHIE, Eli Linnetz, and David LaChapell.

Taylor Marie Prendergast uses feelings of attraction and repulsion to create paradoxical dramas that overwhelm and welcome the viewer into a tender chaos. The idea of a “hellish sublime” is in some ways a reflection of the thorny, hectic world we live in—one that promises an illusion of security and happiness amid the fog of terror and chaos. For Prendergast, the most important creative works contain something that instigates conflict, either with the viewer or within the work itself.

Prendergast grew up with a very rigid sense of what heaven and hell meant, and that rigidity yielded a lot of internalized feelings of shame. The dogs began as a way for her to rethink what the gates of hell might look like, a way of rethinking these imposed ideas of negativity, whether they be social or religious impositions. What if these monstrous, mythical dogs were seen as companions? What if they are guardian angels? Toxic, yes, but also vigilant. That’s what makes them exciting. They act as a means by which she can reconsider and play with inherited constructs that actually are quite violent on a day-to-day basis.