We are pleased to announce Scott Licznerski's first Solo Exhibition in Spain, presenting a curated selection of oil on canvas artworks completed during his stay at our artist residency. In this exhibition, the London-based artist shows move towards increasingly organic forms and broad passages of unfettered primary pigment, where it is as much about the visible surface than that which sits below, concealed, only at times peering through.
Emerging collectively on the wall, Licznerski handles, rotates, and angles stretched linen with simultaneous heavy and soft exchange. As layers in some paintings dry, others begin to surface, encouraging the progressive detachment and looseness in which he likes to work. Encounters of chaos are gradually held as complexity is resolved. Interpretation remains undefined in broad association.
Licznerski seeks division in many aspects, such as that between nature and city. It is this recurring mutation which comes through in his work and mirrors a preoccupation with duality. Often beginning with small, fast sketches on paper, these determine nothing of the end, but rather a series of entrances. The responses are then unknown as there would be too much control otherwise. Distinct and unrecognisable dialogues soon emerge. The title of the exhibition hints at the subtle distinction between perception, allusion, and reality. The sea is not black.
Scott Licznerski (Edinburgh, 1987) sets delicate tensions between opposing states, holding and tightening the looseness of painting until a new language emerges. He is influ- enced by the situational navigation of urban fabrics, censorship, the theatre of existence, and the beautiful accidents our cities subconsciously spew.
His process-driven works are unapologetically physical: made with loaded brush, body, and hand. Preoccupations with duality, trace, and the distortion of what is real and imagined are laid bare. Even if seemingly untethered, there is an air of unequivocal order from manipulation and overpainting. His layering in building the pictorial, blurs the sequencing in which they unravel.
Licznerski's approach challenges preconceived agreements of the immediately accessible and throw-away contemporary times. He honours beauty in areas outside of his control, and redirects focus and permanence to hold intrigue and alter thought. Just as each eye will never see the same, moments can never repeat.
Press release courtesy Alzueta Gallery.