Scott Lyall
13 - 28 Jun 2014
SCOTT LYALL
A Moveable Feast – Part X
13 – 28 June 2014
Campoli Presti is pleased to announce the tenth part of A Moveable Feast with a solo presentation by Scott Lyall. The exhibition is comprised of new works on laminated glass and printed canvases.
The exhibition continues Lyall’s research on the status of digital colour as a code that is constantly translated, transformed, and materialized; continually delaying or deferring its meaning.
The printing technique used for these works extends this act of translation as it turns information directly into colour. The canvases are produced by combining ink and its erasure, in multiple passes, through a UV-based printer. Lyall’s procedure sequences ink in sheer layers of application so that the gradient colour-deposits are mixed directly onto the field. Since the colour information is sent directly to the print heads there is no graphic image that pre-exists this on a screen. The colors are completely written out of quantities.
Following a similar procedure, Lyall’s glass works consist of two panes of museum glass printed on both the front and rear surfaces. Ink is also infused between the glass sheets and into the laminate, making colour the bonding component of the work – not its mere surface but literally its content. The non-contrasting, non-colored surface suggest Ad Reinhardt’s conception of black as the absence of color.
Offering neither a promise nor a threat digital shares the interpretive ambiguity of the term /pharmakon/ as understood by Jacques Derrida. Lyall’s colors, in turn, are a treatment, a poisoning or a cure, an elixir, a charm, a spell, a powder or a pigment, make up, ink and colored paint. They are something with no stable essence, no proper characteristics nor any necessary material manifestation; therefore these marks exist only as a trace. In Lyall’s works, color does not reflect its surroundings but points to a view at the depth of the horizon. It’s the color of the compression of light, and at the same time, par excellence, the color of a compressed digital file.
Scott Lyall lives and works in Toronto and New York. He has held a solo institutional exhibition at The Power Plant, Toronto in 2008 with an accompanying catalogue. Past exhibitions include Campoli Presti, London; Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York; Campoli Presti, London; Campoli Presti, Paris; Galerie Christian Nagel, Antwerp; the Montreal Biennial, and the 7th Santa Fe Biennial.
A Moveable Feast – Part X
13 – 28 June 2014
Campoli Presti is pleased to announce the tenth part of A Moveable Feast with a solo presentation by Scott Lyall. The exhibition is comprised of new works on laminated glass and printed canvases.
The exhibition continues Lyall’s research on the status of digital colour as a code that is constantly translated, transformed, and materialized; continually delaying or deferring its meaning.
The printing technique used for these works extends this act of translation as it turns information directly into colour. The canvases are produced by combining ink and its erasure, in multiple passes, through a UV-based printer. Lyall’s procedure sequences ink in sheer layers of application so that the gradient colour-deposits are mixed directly onto the field. Since the colour information is sent directly to the print heads there is no graphic image that pre-exists this on a screen. The colors are completely written out of quantities.
Following a similar procedure, Lyall’s glass works consist of two panes of museum glass printed on both the front and rear surfaces. Ink is also infused between the glass sheets and into the laminate, making colour the bonding component of the work – not its mere surface but literally its content. The non-contrasting, non-colored surface suggest Ad Reinhardt’s conception of black as the absence of color.
Offering neither a promise nor a threat digital shares the interpretive ambiguity of the term /pharmakon/ as understood by Jacques Derrida. Lyall’s colors, in turn, are a treatment, a poisoning or a cure, an elixir, a charm, a spell, a powder or a pigment, make up, ink and colored paint. They are something with no stable essence, no proper characteristics nor any necessary material manifestation; therefore these marks exist only as a trace. In Lyall’s works, color does not reflect its surroundings but points to a view at the depth of the horizon. It’s the color of the compression of light, and at the same time, par excellence, the color of a compressed digital file.
Scott Lyall lives and works in Toronto and New York. He has held a solo institutional exhibition at The Power Plant, Toronto in 2008 with an accompanying catalogue. Past exhibitions include Campoli Presti, London; Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York; Campoli Presti, London; Campoli Presti, Paris; Galerie Christian Nagel, Antwerp; the Montreal Biennial, and the 7th Santa Fe Biennial.