MICHAEL SCOTT
MAIN GALLERY
29 APRIL - 29 MAY, 1999
Untitled
1999
Enamel on aluminum
30 x 24 inches
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Untitled 1998
Enamel on aluminum
30 x 30 inches
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Installation view
All works: enamel on aluminum
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Sandra Gering Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Michael Scott from 29 April 29 May 1999. As in Scott's
past work, these new paintings are enamel on aluminum, mounted on supports that extend them from the wall.
Over the past decade Michael Scott has made a body of work that oftentimes incorporates the intense opticality of Op art. The illusion and
movement created by his hard-edge geometric compositions both compel and defy the viewer to look at the painting.
In an interview, Scott discusses his work:
³There is an element of viewing the work through the mind's eye, which is something that really interests me. When you lose yourself in the
optics of the paintings, you can have difficulty distinguishing the physical plane of the paintings from the illusionary space they create. I
sometimes relate them to Lichtenstein's mirror paintings, where the subject is empty space a space that exists outside of the painting but in
which nothing is present.
And even though I don't think of my optical work as being surreal, I am interested in the duality of the real and the subconscious which is
how I define the surreal. Max Ernst once said that Surrealism was about keeping one eye open and focused on the physical world, and one
eye shut but focused on the inner world. And on a certain level, I've thought of my optical paintings as consistent with that idea of a double
focus. One eye may focus on the painting as a physical object, while the other is focused on the illusion that is created when the lines merge,
blend, and vibrate. And the physical disorientation that can occur at the time as well. A sort of duality between the conscious and the
subconscious and then crossing over into the psychedelic."