Scott Lyall
REDS, 2025
ink on dibond
72 x 54 in. (183 x 137 cm)
For Scott, a colour is a four-fold structure that combines mathematical, emotional, discursive, and physical (or neuro-psychological) references. Even more precisely, a colour is ink, ideation and emotion, and physical reality. Pixels are the strokes that connect these threads. A pixel is a packet of information that can cross back and forth on an absent threshold that divides immaterials (the math, computing) from the colours that we feel and imagine consciously. But the subject of the work is neither math nor feeling. It occurs as a kind of circulation, and a struggle to relate these diverging poles.
Pour Scott, une couleur est une structure à quatre dimensions qui combine des références mathématiques, émotionnelles, discursives et physiques (ou neuropsychologiques). Plus précisément encore, une couleur est à la fois encre, idéation et émotion, ainsi que réalité physique. Les pixels sont les traits qui relient ces fils. Un pixel est un paquet d’information capable de circuler dans les deux sens à travers un seuil absent qui sépare les immatériels (les mathématiques, l’informatique) des couleurs que nous ressentons et imaginons consciemment. Mais le sujet de l’œuvre n’est ni la mathématique ni le sentiment. Il se manifeste comme une forme de circulation et comme une lutte visant à mettre en relation ces pôles divergents.
FrameWork 11/25: Brendan Flanagan on Scott Lyall
Scott Lyall (b. 1964, lives in Toronto and New York) received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1993. Solo and two-person exhibitions include SculptureCenter, New York (2007); The Power Plant, Toronto (2008); Green On Red Gallery, Dublin (2023); Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York (2023, 2019, 2015, 2013, 2010, 2006); and Campoli Presti, London and Paris (2017, 2014, 2011,2008), among others. Notable group exhibitions include in The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020,MCA Chicago (2024–25); The Painter’s New Tools, Nahmad Contemporary, New York (2022); Ballistic Poetry, Hermès Foundation, Brussels (2016); Anti-Establishment,CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2012); The Montreal Biennial (2011); New York to London and Back: The Medium of Contingency, Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2011); Collatéral, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2009); The Lining of Forgetting, Austin Museum of Art and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC (2008–09); and SITE Santa Fe, 7th International Biennial (2008). Lyall’s work is held in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo; Pinault Collection, Paris; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Collections: National Gallery of Art, Ottawa; Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto; McCarthy Tétrault, Toronto; TD Bank Group, Toronto; private collections; (Toronto; Ottawa; Montreal; Waterloo; New York; Seattle; Los Angeles; San Francisco; San Antonio; London, England; Paris, France; Palm Desert, California).