James P. Scott “Built Paintings” at LA Artcore Brewery Annex
Join us at L.A. Artcore Brewery Annex, on Sunday December 6th from 1:00-3:00pm, for James P. Scott‘s solo show “Built Paintings” opening reception. At 2:00pm there will be an artist discussion. The show will be up through December 27.
The work in James’ solo show is an evolution in his oeuvre, setting aside representational painting in favor of mixed media and collage. James has embraced the nature of this process to focus on what he feels more accurately expresses the “time” we live in. Mixed media has enabled him to break down paintings into layers which he then affixes to structures created within and around the picture plane. The stage is set to create a visual language that describes his favorite environment: Los Angeles; his favorite subjects: cosmology, physics; his favorite muses: birds; and alternative perspectives, point of view, and perception(s). These are visceral works, in which he uses his healthy curiosity and tendency toward the scientific method as tools.
James’ early history in digital work and photography in the 1990s led into his box sculptures, and his high intensity urban landscape paintings a decade later. From early on James was interested in capturing a length of time in a single image, processing each photo to portray the passage of time through movement, blurs, and color fades, layerings and distortion. When adding elements or removing others James was careful to leave a trail – creating a history and a record of construction that invites the viewer to follow his decisions, a path that encouraged the viewer to mentally travel through the period of time with the artist as he made the work. James says,
“When I look at the work of masters, I look for changes, alterations. Those are the things I connect with most deeply. I feel I really understand the artist in those moments.”
James endeavored to continue these ideas in his new “Built Painting” series. Abstraction is a departure from the earlier urban landscape painting along a route laid out by his mentor Franklyn Liegel. With Liegel’s concepts in mind James channels the city he loves into his work. Textures, shapes, surfaces, obstacles, fences, screens, windows, and other urban landscape motifs show up in this new body. Breaking down, exposing, and articulating these motifs through the use of layering effects and the use of materials: these techniques create a physical depth to each piece. The components of each piece work to tell the story of the decisions, the ideas, the history and the evolution of the piece. Often these abstractions contain a subject, usually ideas about art, anecdotes from life, experiences, or an insightful bit of scientific knowledge. In these pieces James proposes relationships between knowledge and seeing. Seeing equates to understanding. The artist’s curiosity allows the work to dance in the complexity of the universe in an almost scientific way, as if saying, “Lets explore our understanding of the structure and order present in the universe.” The vocabulary of these paintings includes arbitrary color, collage, hard and soft materials, thick and thin passages, transparent and opaque, handmade vs. machine made tracts, to name a few. In the end James has built a convincing language.
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In addition to James P.Scott’s solo show at L.A. Artcore, Dani Dodge’s latest installation entitled Peeled & Raw which builds upon her previous interactive sculptural installations with a piece consisting primarily of heavily wallpapered surfaces, is on exhibition.
Dani Dodge