SILVERMAN is pleased to present A cashed cheque, a canceled stamp, an exhibition of new work by Hugh Scott-Douglas on view from December 9 through January 28, 2012. The artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery features a series of cyanotype paintings as well as large-scale linen laser-cuts.
This latest body of work advances the artist’s ongoing investigation of painterly abstraction by non-painterly means, mainly through his use of the cyanotype process whereby a textile is impregnated with a light sensitive emulsion and exposed to natural light. The resulting chromatic variations remain as an index, or a stamp marked on the surface as a record of the communication between surface and material influence. Unlike previous works no negatives are used. Instead, each painting is exposed as a monochrome, laid outside the artist’s studio and sprayed and stained with materials that affect exposure. As such, these works draw out unique and unpredictable results from an unmediated process as each blue surface actively documents its experimental gestation from start to finish, while remaining inconsequential to its content.
The materially related laser cuts achieve their finitude through their perpetuated reference to the past works of the artist. Each composition is developed from photographs of earlier pieces, in this case a single painting found in the artist’s last solo exhibition in Berlin. This visual information is re-ordered by a digital algorithm and sent as vector files to be laser cut directly onto gessoed linen. With the content of the previous work physically removed from the support surface, these pieces emerge less as autonomous works, than the realization of a bonded agreement between two parties: the work and the artist. These are essentially cashed cheques, documenting the expenditure of a certain formal currency.
Hugh Scott-Douglas (b. 1988) received his BFAfrom OCAD, Toronto. His practice is marked by process-driven techniques that explore the relationship between image ground and material support. He has exhibited internationally, including in London, Los Angeles, Berlin, Chicago, and Toronto, with forthcoming shows in New York and Milan. Scott-Douglas currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.