NYAB Event - Carlton Scott Sturgill "Casual Encounters"

Carlton Scott Sturgill "Casual Encounters"

Masters & Pelavin

This event has ended.

Pelavin Gallery presents a solo exhibition of recent work by Carlton Scott Sturgill. Working with materials taken from the landscape of American suburbia, such as paint-chip samples from Home Depot and designer clothing from the All-American company, Ralph Lauren, Sturgill creates works that examine shifting notions of sexuality, privacy and social mobility within an increasingly brand-conscious society. His paint-chip mosaics scratch the surface of suburban pretense, exploring the compulsion to both expose intimate details of our lives through online social networks, as we simultaneously hide behind the facade of a commoditized version of the American Dream. This will be Sturgill’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, and in New York City.

The focus of this exhibition derives directly from personal ads posted on Craigslist. Text and images found within actual postings on the website are reproduced as colorful mosaics created from hand-cut Ralph Lauren paint-chip samples. In many of Sturgill’s works sexually explicit images taken from the website are realistically represented with hundreds of colors from individually cut paint-chips. In other works lines of text from the personal ads are recreated using groupings of letters from the titles of paint colors printed on each paint-chip, resulting in colorful striped compositions.

While recent controversy over the Craigslist site has mainly focused on issues of prostitution and censorship surrounding the Adult Services section of the website, Sturgill’s work investigates the Casual Encounters section, which has become an online meeting place for individuals and couples seeking no-strings-attached sexual encounters. Postings on the website range from the Fun Married Couple Looking 4 Adventure to the Young Sexy Male Looking for Older Women. Those seeking partners on the website tend to express a variety of sexual appetites, but most of their postings are similar in that they are explicit, to-the-point and stress the need for discretion, allowing them to fulfill their private fantasies without exposing themselves to the scrutiny of friends and neighbors.

Born in 1971 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Carlton Scott Sturgill received a BFA from the University of Cincinnati and MA from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Although he now lives in Brooklyn, Sturgill’s work continues to be shaped by the bedroom communities surrounding his hometown; an area so concerned with clean living that Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine was banned from sale within the city limits for over twenty years and an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs sparked an obscenity trial.