ART CITIES:Paris-Michael Scott

Michael’s Scott’s history with linear abstraction dates back to contemporary art’s Neo-Geo movement. Using mathematics to build specific parameters for each work, he creates frisson by painting surfaces that can be difficult to look at. Color, contrast and scale all contribute to the overall optical effect. Scott’s work is meticulous by nature. Fractions and progressions are highly meaningful, as are any diversions into expressionism or gestural mark-making.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Xippas Gallery Archive

Michael Scott realizes paintings that can be considered as many visual experiments pushed to the extreme. His artworks bring the optical impact to such a level that it makes them almost impossible to look at, the artist describes his paintings as “Op art on acid”. A disruptive experience that underlines his extreme point of view on art. With his solo exhibition “Circle Paintings” at Xippas Gallery in Paris, Michael Scott revisits and gives a new direction to his first works made in the 1980s, paintings of near-identical concentric circles. According to the artist, “The circle paintings from the 1980’s were based on a desire to make paintings where no one painting is better or worse than another.  The antithesis to the concept of the masterpiece”, also “Each painting is a process and even if the process appears to be the same, each work is different because it starts and ends at different points in time. With the addition of color, and the variations in size and framing, Michael Scott’s recent paintings are much more cheerful. The ideas used for hanging suggest the interchangeable nature of every painting, while retaining the same wariness concerning the concept of originality (a driving force behind his painting in the 1980s). In addition, his works being painted on aluminium panels, have a stronger presence and appear to be more like real objects rather than “pure” paintings.  Michael Scott’s work has been associated with that of his friends Steve di Benedetto, Matthew McCaslin and Steven Parrino, with whom he has exhibited on a number of occasions. Since the end of the 1980s, his painting has embodied a major trend in recent American art, in the tradition of abstract painting, but also conceptual art and pop art.

Info: Curator: Vincent Pécoil, Xippas Gallery, 108 rue Vieille du Temple, Paris, Duration: 15/12/18-16/2/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-13:00 & 14:00-19:00, Sat 10:00-19:00, www.xippas.com