Scott MacLeay: Press

PARIS NEW YORK FLORIANÓPOLIS

S C O T T M A C L E AY

Extracts: articles & critiques

“Called Attitudes, the exhibition is a coolly elegant and visually sophisticated bit of photographic magic “.

Susan Mertens, Art critic, VANCOUVER SUN - Vancouver, Canada.

“Scott MacLeay’s prints seem somehow manipulated – handcolored at the very least. The fact that they are not is one of their illusions. MacLeay’s deft application of light to various surfaces and his careful control of exposure on color film cause subtle changes to occur in the look of common subject matter. “The blank studio wall is my base” he says. “My objective is to fill it with my fictions”.”

Stephen DeGange, writer, CAMERA ARTS, New York, USA “Canadian photographer Scott MacLeay is the author of this very beautiful exhibition entitled FRAGMENTS, CYCLES, SOUNDS. This veritable theatrical director of images is without a doubt, one of the great photographers of our time.”

Jean-Luc Signamarcheix, Art critic, LITTERATURE ART SPECTACLE - Paris, France “The exhibit is a lesson in photography.”

Patrick Duval, Art critic, LE PETIT JOURNAL - Paris, France “MacLeay’s color prints are instantly captivating. The photographs appear more like Matisse gouaches than photographs. The viewer even resists pressing to identify the work as a photograph and the content as a figure. The effect is remarkable and beautiful. MacLeay also works effectively with color and space relationships in much the same way that Albers did, with his famous squares.”

Charles Kaufman, Art critic, ARKANSAS, GAZETTE - Little Rock Arkansas, USA. “Fragment, Cycles, Sounds as MacLeay entitled the entire exhibition, created an environment of such poetry.”

Allen Ellenzweig, Photo critic, ART IN AMERICA - New York, USA. “The colors employed have no particular relation to what is natural, with the truth one expects from photography. The color has a grain which is not that of the skin but that of light. Light melts the colors.

The spectator is solicited by a system of cyclical lighting. A musical cycle is superimposed, without synchronization, on the lighting cycle, thus creating chance combinations. The spectator’s habitual approach to the space will be broken down, but only at the risk of inconveniencing him and of providing him with another sensation of himself.”

Madeleine Dechamps, Art historian and curator, ART PRESS - Paris France. reproduction

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“By treating the body as a formal entity, MacLeay honors a tradition that stretches from Weston to Mapplethorpe…His strength is in marrying human form and color, transforming choreographic motion into its constituent gestures and reducing composition to a two-dimensional graphic surface in which body parts are abstractly integrated….so austere they seem like visual haiku…there is courage in a cynical age of walking a tightrope of fragile emotions.”

Allen Ellenzweig, Photo critic, ART IN AMERICA - New York, USA. “People touching, pulling, hugging, directing one another. The series of interactions becomes so complex that in some prints it is difficult to determine which limbs belong to which figure. This is the basis of MacLeay’s pieces: the interlocking relationships and the ambiguities of these relationships. Munch’s famous CRY naturally comes to mind in the intensity of the gestures, in the starkness of the scène, in the desperate isolation. …heir to a full heritage of northern European artistic sensibilities, much in the same way in which Ingmar Bergmans images reflect the intensity and isolation of a literary tradition stemming from Strindberg and Ibsen.”

Steven Haas, Art critic, ARTS MAGAZINE - New York, USA. “We are here before a collection of bursts of light. In black and white, in color, views of body fragments, nude fragments or more accurately, unclothed fragments floating on the border of bodies and light. On the uncertain frontiers, we walk, we touch, eyes closed and mouths Silence sweats from silenced voices, open mouths and even of puffs of light, like music that disappears, a chord that is reborn without beginning or end, le maxim is concerned as much by sound as it is by silence.”

François Raffinot, French choreographer, CLICHÉS - Paris, France.

“Silence reigns in these photos like that of dreams when we yell for help and no cry is comes out. These photos seem to state the horrible pain of a body that aspires to nothing more than to re-melt into the mists of time from where it emerged. The bodies here in this light sometimes evoke other emaciated bodies of our memories, but they acquire here a certain grandness, a solemnity that counterbalances cruelty. An image of a trio in which 2 characters come face-to-face with the third is like the essence of classic tragedy. What is written must come to pass, it is inevitable, but the choir is there to accompany destiny. It is important that these are photographs and not drawings or paintings because the situations acquire a credibility that only a photo can provide.

Here we are confronted by nude bodies sculptural in aspect where the hands, neck, and legs are effigies sculpted in stone or bark, where the grain is the color of earth, of primates. And the light is that of savanna nights, full of unknown sounds when animals are unknowingly watched and we are voyeurs subjugated by a reality unaffected by time.”

Madeleine Deschamps, Art historian and curator, ZOOM MAGAZINE - Paris, France. reproduction

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“Created by the Canadian composer Scott MACLEAY, PRIVATE CIRCUS, a cosmopolitan band, plays a kind of music situated at the centre of gravity of the triangle: Opera-Blues-Cabaret. A dense and rich piece, exceptional in all meanings of the term. A second CD by this band including compositions and pieces created for Contemporary ballets. The style goes towards experimental music, but without its usual coldness. On the contrary, the heat and human factor prevails here.”

Musea Records, LES CLASSIQUES DU FUTURE – Paris, France: sur les deux CD’s “Les Petites Foules” et “La Moitié de l’Histoire” du groupe Private Circus.

“Private Circus is a group in which artists pursuing diverse differents paths come together. For a specific moment video artists, singers, musicians, choreographers, dancers gather together to marry their arts. Private Circus gets its innovative energy from opera. Lyricism in the tradtion of Tuxedo Moon or the Residents, Private Circus ‘s concept seduces immediately. A surreal mixture in the service of realism, a surgical analysis of ordinary madness and bitter beauty.”

Myriam Léon, Critique de musique, BEST MAGAZINE - Paris, France: Article sur le groupe Private Circus de Scott MacLeay “Images that are not representative of what you see, but of feelings, thoughts and sensations. Scenes captured by digital camera lenses that go through multimedia processing and when completed, speak more of the author than about the subject being photographed. In short, this is the work of new media artist, composer and writer.

Scott MacLeay. This Canadian, who lived for 30 years in France, and has made his home in Florianópolis for the past four years, is the curator of two exhibitions that open up alternative possibilities for conventional photography via the exploration of new creative processes.

Beyond the abundant colors, and his view that traditional B&W photography is a thing of the past, the works of Macleay are marked by the perforation and multiplication of individuals, overlapping or superimposed, to which are added symbols, codes or graphic elements. Anger, doubt, confusion, anxiety, and other feelings are his “inspirations”. Controling the essence of an emotion and from this creating a work of art is part of a long and profound process.

There is no ready explanation for this phenomenon.

In his latest works of the series “Provocative Barcodes” in which he slices the image thousands of times into very fine lines varying the spacing between them to obtain the specific color, texture and perspective of each element. Developing the process took nearly three years of research. The result is for the public to decide. “I am not a preacher, I do not have a message. I want people to look and to draw their own conclusions,” he says.”

Edinara Kley, Repórter cultural, NOTÍCIAS DO DIA Florianópolis, Brasil.

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“Between April 29 and June 2, Florianópolis welcomes the exhibition of contemporary photographs “Interferences” of renowned Canadian artist, Scott MacLeay. The exhibition offers the public the opportunity to understand the diversity of his work that focuses on expressing what we feel and think about the world around us, rather than simply focusing on visual representations of what we see.”

Centro Cultural Canadense, São Paulo, Brasil : Calendário Culturel – Canada Brasil 2014 “At the entrance of the 380 square meters of space at the state Cultural Centre (CIC) which houses the exhibition INTERFERENCES, there is a text of photographer and curator Scott Macleay: “There are no new subjects, only new and highly personal ways to examine the same ones.” In the elaborate catalog of the show, one more clue to understanding the philosophy of the exhibition: “There is no more powerful engine for innovation, in terms of perspective, than the prioritization of process.”

Effectively acclimatized for what is to follow, the viewer circles the large space, the walls lined with 70 large format images, rich in the interferences that underline the controversies in contemporary photography...MacLeay’s images, according to him, are “dedicated to the importance of leaving behind any artificial barriers to completely free our exploration in order not to inhibit what we think and feel.”

Bola Texeira, editor de Photo Magazine, Brasil.

“Sharing knowledge and experience is the hallmark of Canadian photographer Scott Macleay, who lives in Florianopolis and is curating two exhibitions with openings on April 29 at the Lindolf Bell Gallery (CIC) and on the 30th at the Helena Fretta Art Gallery.

In opposition to more traditional appraoches, the images prioritize the exploration of new processes and conceptual structures, contributing to the creation of a new media development hub in Florianópolis.”

Confederação Brasileira de Fotografia, “Fotógrafo Scott Macleay promove duas exposições em Florianópolis” “Passionate about creating media art and music over the past 36 years in Canada, France and Brazil, MacLeay compares life to a relay race, with reliance on individual and collective efforts. It is for this reason that he has always developed educational projects designed to stimulate thinking concerning new ways for artists to reflect on the means they employ and the work they create.

“The exhibition is a celebration of the risk-taking essential to the development of creative thinking, despite the doubts and inevitable failures that often occur,” says MacLeay. For him, the real effort lies not only in the conceptual development of the work, but also in the foundation of camaraderie needed to resist the pressure to conform in a world that often values orthodoxy at the expense of creative marginality.”

Fundação Franklin Cascaes, Florianópolis, Brasil

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“The book provides the author’s personal look at the process of conceptualizing and making photographs today, and the importance of cross-pollinating with creative processes from other forms of artistic expression in the visual and performing arts.”

Scott MacLeay Launches His New Book at the Centro Europeu in Curitiba and UNIVALI University in Florianopolis and Itajai.

Portal Photos, 11 May 2015 “Perception and Process in Photography is as much a window as a mirror that asks photographers to question about what they can bring to the discussion concerning the relevance of contemporary art and the role of photography in it. It is an indispensable practical guide for those looking to escape what could be described as the tyranny of photographic thought.”

Resenha: Pensar, Sentir, Ver – Scott MacLeay - Dec 8th, 2015 Everson Tavares, Curso de Fotografia.org “Required reading for photographers who want a different path from the crowd, conceptually speaking. Scott’s essays pose profound questions on various facets of photography as an art form such as the role of interference, the decades-long domination of black & white work and a number of other factors of utmost importance to understand.”

Canadian artist Scott MacLeay launches thought-provoking book on art photography, Sebo Neto, RADAR PB 21/04/2105 “A guide for those who seek to escape from the tyranny of traditional photographic thought, permitting artists to question and reflect on the relevance and the role of photography in contemporary art.”

Scott MacLeay - Pensar, Sentior, Ver: SESC SP book launching announcement, Instituto Pinheiro 4/03/2015 launching of the Livre SP “The Canadian MacLeay, with his experience as new media artist, composer, writer and director of institutions around the world, presents us with thought-provoking texts and unusual images that beyond notions of beauty, are inspiring.”

Review du livre Pensar, Sentir, Ver: Fotografia – DG, Portugal 01/05/2015

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