The Realm of the Clown

Born in 1958 in Paoli (Pennsylvania, US), Michael Scott lives and works in New York.

An established painter on the contemporary New York art scene, his work is part of a major recent current in American art, at the intersection between radical abstraction and forms inherited from pop art and conceptual art. Since 1989, he has been making paintings which push the visual experience to its limits. 

Michael Scott juxtaposes narrow vertical lines in different colours on aluminium plates, usually square-shaped and of various sizes. His artworks bring the optical impact to such a level that it makes them almost impossible to look at. This disruptive experience underlines the artist’s extreme point of view on art. Putting aside subjectivity, he adopts a systematic and mechanical approach.

In his last paintings, randomness is more present. Whereas in the 90’s, his paintings were more programmatic, in the sense that they were calculated very precisely, his more recent works integrate a more intuitive artistic approach which generates hesitations, changes and accidents inherent to this process.

However, Michael Scott’s career has also been marked by breaks, forms of letting go, where the artist returned to figurative work and adopted approaches relating to expressionism and comic books.

Among his significant institutional exhibitions are: MAMCO, Geneva (2017 and 2016); Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland and MACBA, Buenos Aires (2015); Le Consortium, Dijon and Kunsthalle Bern (2012); CAPC, Bordeaux (2011); Circuit, Lausanne (2014) ; Le Magasin, Grenoble (2009); La Fondation Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence (2008); le Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne (2005); Naples Museum of Art, Naples, in 2001.

Michael Scott paintings feature in significant public collections: Le Consortium Museum, Dijon; Fonds National d’Art Contemporain; FRAC Nord-Pas-de-Calais; MAMCO, Geneva; Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne; Kunsthalle Bern; MACBA, Buenos Aires.