The artist Henry Taylor grew up in Los Angeles, where he worked as a psychiatric technician until 1997. But by the mid–90s, he realized he needed a change and enrolled at the California Institute for Fine Arts. Taylor painted obsessively, bringing bright swaths of color to portraits of people and household items such as cereal boxes, detergent, and furniture. His work calls to mind the Harlem Renaissance painters Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, yet his energy is powerfully contemporary. Taylor has since become one of the most important portraitists in America. This exhibition of the artist’s recent paintings inaugurates Hauser & Wirth’s space in Paris, which occupies an entire hôtel particulier dating from 1877. —Elena Clavarino