Simon Lee Gallery Hong Kong is proud to present an exhibition of new work by New York based artist Hugh Scott-Douglas - his first with the gallery in Hong Kong, and following the exhibition Consumables in London earlier this year, his second solo show with Simon Lee Gallery to date.

This new body of photographs are a continuation of a series of meditations about:

The Automatic Image

What is the integrity (authorship, legality) of the producer (photographer, worker) over their product (artwork, commodity) as it is pushed through various protocols (formats, factories) - especially as the related to a decentralised (mechanised, networked) style of production?

For these untitled prints, the initial photographic image, composed of a disassembled automatic watch movement, is captured by a modified scanner that has had the standard factory lid replaced with an LED light panel. This modification allows the control and manipulation of the hermetic environment, while also paradoxically blowing out the content of the photographic image. In short - the subject dissolves into itself through the enforcement of strict control.

The image is tilted across the surface of its support and then run through the printer 16 times with the same registration marks. The image repeats and the ink builds up; stretching the graphic content and inflating the currency of the materiality of the ink.

Repetition is a fantastic way to make a lot from a little… to extract the maximum from the subject… here, the same content performs the same task again, and again, and again, and again and again…

The Automatic Watch

a WORKFORCE

The automatic watch as a workforce… Hyper Fordist in nature each unique analog component contributes one specific function in the ecosystem that is the watch’s movement. No two parts are exactly the same. 

Running off a body’s surplus energy the watch documents both its own and its hosts passing time… tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick

Hugh Scott-Douglas (b. 1988 in Cambridge, UK) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Blum & Poe, New York, NY (2015); Promises to Pay in Solid Substance, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, CA (2014); and Hugh Scott-Douglas, eyes without a face, Croy Nielsen, Berlin, Germany (2014). In 2014, the solo exhibition A Broken Mule was held at Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo. His work is included in public and private collections internationally including The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), CA; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, MI; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany; and AGO - Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada. Forthcoming solo exhibitions include Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi, Japan (2015) and Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA (2015).

Installation images courtesy of Simon Lee Gallery and Kitmin Lee Photo.

Press release courtesy Simon Lee Gallery.