Artist: Hannah Taurins
Exhibition title: Cover Girl
Venue: Theta, New York, US
Date: February 23 – March 26, 2022
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Theta, New York
“People always want to know what my real hair color is, as if that would reveal something essential.” – Marlene Dumas
Theta is pleased to present Cover Girl, Hannah Taurins’s debut solo exhibition. In her hybrid drawing-painting practice, Taurins’s surfaces are built up by prismatic layers of colored pencil, gouache, and marker. Facial features and fexed limbs are variously fayed and ablated by rough erasure that congeals pigment and conceals personhood, condensing fgures to form.
In a series of vibrant works on paper mounted to wood, female characters twist and tilt rhythmically toward a vanishing point of identity. Taurins works simultaneously from reference and the imaginary, so that a pose might derive from a contortionist’s photo archive, a face from fiction, accessories from an ad campaign. A matrix of working women–background dancers, models, spies, and vamps–fold professional distance into seductive choreography. What do they want? That’s none of your business.
Something like desire carries the eye from one image to the next. Taurins seeks the vacancy in that urge and articulates it in the capacities of the feminine form. Alternately coquettish and aloof, they give little away with regard to agendas beyond their command of the picture plane. Bending, staring, preening, twirling subjects slip in and out of objecthood, their images refracted under the cast of a sour limelight.
Hannah Taurins (b. 1997, Houston, TX) is an artist who lives and works in New York City. She received a BFA from The Cooper Union in 2021. Upcoming exhibitions include Trivial Pursuit, curated by Daisy Sanchez at Entrance, New York. Cover Girl is Taurins’s frst solo exhibition.
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Shroud, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 9 x 12 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Girl, Covered, 2022, Colored pencil and marker on paper mounted to board 11 x 14 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Giantess, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 11 x 14 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Flush, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 18 x 24 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Study for Shy, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 9 x 12 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Spinner, 2021, Colored pencil on paper mounted to board 14 x 18 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Veil, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 9 x 12 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, D’illusion, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 18 x 18 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, It’s for You, 2021, Colored pencil on paper mounted on wood 18 x 14 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Shy, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 18 x 24 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Sheath, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 18 x 24 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Curtain, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 18 x 24 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, The Lace Model, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 9 x 12 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, The Red Model, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 9 x 12 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Spy, 2021, Colored pencil, acrylic paint, and ballpoint pen on paper mounted on wood, 14 x 18 x 1 in
Hannah Taurins, Likeminded, 2021, Colored pencil on paper mounted to board 9 x 12 x 1 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Looking Back, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 18 x 24 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Pin Up, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 11 x 14 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Hunch, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 9 x 12 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, soft grip low eyes, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 18 x 24 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Flash, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 9 x 12 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Spotlight, 2022, Colored pencil and gouache on paper mounted to board 18 x 24 x 1.5 in
Hannah Taurins, Cover Girl, 2022, exhibition view, Theta, New York
Hannah Taurins, Undercover, 2022, Colored pencil and marker on paper mounted to board 11 x 14 x 1.5 in