SCOT HEYWOOD: PLANAR VARIATIONS
SCOT HEYWOOD PLANAR VARIATIONS
SCOT HEYWOOD PLANAR VARIATIONS JULY 12–SEPTEMBER 1, 2023 MODERNISM INC. | 724 ELLIS ST | SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109
Special Relativity
By Jonathon KeatsFrom the day he first picked up a paintbrush, Scot Heywood knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish. Heywood has been single-mindedly focused for the past half century on “the experiential possibilities of a nonrepresentational geometric abstract painting”.
Although he was inspired by the pioneering abstraction of Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian, Heywood came of age in 1970s Los Angeles, where masters such as John McLaughlin were perfecting a hard-edge aesthetic and fetish finish that would make Broadway Boogie Woogie seem figurative by comparison. Absorbing the work in his midst, including the emphatically nonrepresentational painting of contemporaries such as James Hayward, Ed Moses, Edith Baumann, Mary Corse, and John M. Miller, Heywood developed a unique approach that forefronts “the frontal nature of the painted plane, precognitive experience, and, ultimately, singularity.”
Like other painters of the period, he began his quest by creating monochromatic panels, modulating light in terms of the relationship between color and the painted surface. In this way, he effectively addressed Clement Greenberg’s 1961 assertion that “The first mark on a canvas destroys its literal and utter flatness,” which, Greenberg argued, led artists such as Mondrian to produce “a kind of illusion that suggests a kind of third dimension.”
Yet it was an early accident that led to Heywood’s crucial breakthrough, distinguishing his work and establishing his future direction. While organizing monochrome paintings on his studio floor, he observed the chromatic relationship between them, and also noticed the lines made when they were set side-by-side. These marks were not illusionistic, but a con-
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sequence of the physicality of the canvases: crevasses accentuated by shadow. Another physical parameter became apparent when he set the canvases on the wall and one of them slipped out of alignment. “Suddenly I had gravity,” he recalls. “Suddenly I had tension on an extreme level that I couldn’t get from lining them up evenly.”
In other words, the pure abstraction of painting, which had previously been limited by the pictorial connotations of painted lines and proportional distribution of colors, was paradoxically facilitated by the paintings becoming sculptural. The third dimension – literal instead of illusionistic – provided the degrees of freedom denied to the painter by Greenberg’s 1961 polemic.
With the compositional potential of abutment and juxtaposition, together with his command of color and texture, Heywood had all he needed to explore the experiential possibilities of abstraction on his own highly personal terms. Ever since, it’s been a matter subtle incremental change. “It’s like a four- or five-year period and then – boom! – just a minor shift,” he says.
To look at the thirteen paintings in Planar Variations, created by Heywood between 2008 and 2020, is to see the encompassing power of Heywood’s profound engagement with what might appear at first to be a simple premise. The paintings all enlist Heywood’s multi-panel format to achieve tension and balance. Although they range in scale, their physical presence is always commanding. Building on their sculptural foundations, they are all effectively architectural, the walls acting as a support for their visual structuring of the surrounding space and the viewer’s perceptual experience.
Heywood’s handling of gravity is a decisive factor. In paintings such as Double Edge – Yellow, Blue, Gray and Double Edge – Red, Blue, Yellow, he uses slippage of a panel to evoke a gravitational difference between different color weights. Initially it might appear that he is merely literalizing a metaphoric equivalence, illustrating the double meaning of weight. But what Heywood is actually doing is far more original on a conceptual level. Heywood is working with the material foundations of metaphor, achieving visually what the poet does linguistically. Eschewing words and their inherent symbolism, the impact is arguably more direct.
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Double Edge – Yellow, Blue, Gray, 2007-08, acrylic on canvas over panel, 46 x 44 inches
The slippages also introduce physical asymmetries that, because the paintings are so perfectly balanced visually, make the room seem to tilt and torque. In effect, the spectator’s eyes view the paintings as reality, and the mind compensates for the surprising internal geometry of the art by distorting everything else. These effects are especially pronounced in Heywood’s Haibuke series, though all of his paintings over the past several decades can likewise be understood relativistically.
Within each of his paintings, Piet Mondrian sought to achieve a quality he called “dynamic equilibrium.” Through his arrangement of multiple panels, Heywood takes dynamic equilibrium beyond the confines of the picture plane to include the space occupied by the viewer. Ultimately the dynamic equilibrium is kinesthetic, experienced in the spectator’s own body.
As Heywood explains, “the structural and coloristic intent is always directed towards a dynamic/static tension, forcing the viewer into not simply a conceptualization of the work, but one that allows for a physical relationship between viewer and painting.” As a consequence of this relationship, the entire world is implicated in Heywood’s art. All that is not illusionistic participates in his abstraction.
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PLATES
Double Edge – Red, Blue, Yellow, 2007, acrylic on canvas over panel, 80 x 72 inches
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Double Edge – Yellow, Blue, Gray, 2007/08, acrylic on canvas over panel, 46 x 44 inches
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Compression – Gray, Red, Canvas, 2017, acrylic on canvas over panel, 60 x 62 inches
Arupa – Black, Blue, Canvas, 2018
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acrylic on canvas over panel, 72 x 89 inches
Arupa – Gray, Red, Canvas, 2017
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acrylic on canvas over panel, 38 x 38 inches
Arupa – Yellow, Gray, Canvas, 2018
acrylic on canvas over panel, 38 x 38 inches
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Transition – Linen, Black, Gray, white, 2019
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acrylic and matte medium on linen over panel, 60 x 60 inches
Haikube VI – White on White, 2019
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acrylic on linen over panel, 10 x 18 inches
Haikube II – Black, Linen, 2019
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acrylic on linen over panel, 10 x 18 inches
Haikube IV – White, Linen, 2019
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acrylic on linen over panel, 10 x 18 inches
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Matisse’s Window – White, Linen, Black, Blue, 2020, acrylic on linen over panel, 42 x 81 inches
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Haikube – White, Black, Linen, 2020, signed, acrylic on linen over panel, 22 x 44 inches
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Haikube Red – Red, Black, Gray, Linen, 2020, acrylic on linen over panel, 30 x 60 inches
Haikube – Linen, White, Black, 2020, acrylic on linen over panel, 22 x 44 inches
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SCOT HEYWOOD: CHRONOLOGY
Born 1951, Los Angeles, CA; Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2023 Modernism Inc., San Francisco, CA
2019 Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2017 Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2015 Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2014 Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2013 Santa Monica College, Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery, CA (catalogue)
Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (catalogue)
2012 Polarities, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2010 Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2009 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2008 Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2005 Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA
2003 Chac Mool Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2000 Chac Mool Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1998 Chac Mool Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1995 Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA
1994 Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA 1992 Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA
1990 Kiyo Higashi Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1989 Newspace, Los Angeles, CA 1987 Newspace, Los Angeles, CA 1986 Newspace, Los Angeles, CA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021 LA Abstraction 1980-2000, Modernism Inc., San Francisco, CA
2020 Group Exhibition, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2019 Color, Shape & Texture, Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, Telluride, CO
Laguna Art Museum Auction, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA
The Edge of Light: Historic and Contemporary Perspectives on Californian Abstraction, Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach, CA
2018 Non-Objective, Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, Telluride, CO
Modernism Show, Peter Blake Gallery, Palm Springs, CA
2017 Cool, Calm, Collected, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2016 Selected Works by Gallery Artists, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2015 Summer Group Show, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
James Hayward | Scot Heywood | John M. Miller, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2014 Joe Goode | Scot Heywood | John M. Miller, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
Summer Formal, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2013 20th Anniversary Group Show, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
Polyform: Larry Bell, Scot Heywood, Gustavo Pérez, and Mark Pharis, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Spring Group Show, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2012 California Abstract Painting 1952-2011 (Curated by James Hayward), Woodbury University Nan Rae Gallery, Burbank, CA
Transcending Abstraction III, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2011 Less is More, Subliminal Projects Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Marks and Movement: Five Painters, Edith Baumann, James Hayward, Scot Heywood, John M. Miller & Ed Moses, Santa Monica College Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Three Abstract Painters: John McLaughlin, James Hayward, Scot Heywood, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2009 Lita Albuquerque | Scot Heywood | Andy Moses, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2008 Planes and Surfaces: James Hayward, Larry Bell, Scot Heywood, Wouter Dam, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Fifteen Years/ Fifteen Artists, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
Color Blind: Black, White and Grey in Contemporary Art, Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
Tony DeLap | Scot Heywood, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2007 Black and White, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2006 Monochrome Painting: Some Versions from Ad Reinhardt to Present, Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
2006 To Present, Cardwell Jimmerson Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2000 West Coast Abstraction, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
A Little So Cal Abstraction, Mandarin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
That’s Hot, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM Spring Fever, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
Luminous, Ikon, Ltd. / Kay Richards Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA 1999 Simply Complex: Monochromatic Paintings from L.A. (Curated by Reuben M. Baron and Joan Boykoff Baron),
Dorsky
1997 Under
1996 Starting
McLaughlin, Patricia Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1994 Abstraction in Los Angeles, New Image Art, Los Angeles, CA Red Painting, Newspace, Los Angeles, CA 1992 Plane/Structures (Curated by David Pagel), Otis Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA 1991 In Plane Sight: Abstract Painting in Los Angeles (Curated by Frances Colpitt), Blue Star Art Space, San Antonio, TX 1989 New L.A. Abstraction, Art Gallery, College of the Mainlands, Texas City, TX Group Show, Burnett Miller Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1988 Group Show, Kiyo Higashi Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Art and Soul, Pence Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1985 Los Angeles Current Abstract Painting, Marc Richards Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Primary Abstraction: Los Angeles, Modernism Inc., San Francisco, CA 1984 Black and White Drawings from the David Nellis Collection, California State University, Los Angeles, CA 1983 Tenth Anniversary Exhibition, Newspace, Los Angeles, CA 1982 Divisions: Seven Los Angeles Painters, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA 1980 New Clear Painting, Newspace, Los Angeles, CA 1979 New Abstract Painters from Los Angeles, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA In the Tradition, Group Studio Show, Los Angeles, CA Abstract Painting, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, Vanguard Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Gallery, New York, NY 1998 Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
500/Intimate Abstract Painting, Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles, CA
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