BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.- The exhibition Taylor Davis: 2001 ICA Artist Prize opens today at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and remains on view until September 2, 2002. Taylor Davis’s sculpture and installation plays on contradictions. At first glance, her work clearly references everyday or rural structures--from loading pallets and tables to barns and troughs--but on close inspection reveals the type of meticulous craftwork and construction that you would expect to see lavished on precious materials or decorative objects. The placement of the boards, mirrors, and screws that materially make up her recent body of work is, in fact, anything but haphazard and clearly reveal that Davis has belabored every measurement and scale and even the position of the grain of the plywood.

Davis constructs her work with the viewers’ physical interaction in mind: moving around them, one is deliberately enticed into examining interior spaces or partial enclosures. Each angle or side appears to contradict or alter one’s perception of the previous view, such that a multifaceted perspective is developed that is additionally complicated by the presence of mirrors that magically dissolve and extend space. The viewer is encouraged to circle endlessly in a futile attempt to rationalize the deceptively simple-looking forms.

Davis received a Diploma of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and an MFA from Bard’s Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts. She has been an Assistant Professor at Massachusetts College of Art since 1999. She was included in the exhibition "Traveling Scholars" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1996 and in "Material Force" at the Boston Center for the Arts in 1998. In 2001 and 2002, she had a one-person exhibition at Green Street Gallery in Boston.

The ICA Artist Prize is awarded annually to a Boston-area artist in recognition of exceptional work produced in the last year. Previous recipients have included Ambreen Butt and Laylah Ali.