NYAB Event - Hugh Scott-Douglas "A PLACE IN THE SUN"

Hugh Scott-Douglas "A PLACE IN THE SUN"

Clifton Benevento

This event has ended.

Clifton Benevento presents A Place In The Sun, the New York solo-debut of the Toronto based artist Hugh Scott-Douglas.

Drawing its title from the 1951 George Stevens film of the same name, A Place In The Sun, presents a new body of cyanotypes.

Within film history Stevens’ A Place In The Sun, is regarded as an excellent example of analog film editing and is particularly well known for its long dissolves between scenes. Using this as a historical reference and the dissolve as an editing technique to formally connote the passage of time, Scott-Douglas creates a series of 30 by 40 inch cyanotypes "shot" over a number of afternoons using the natural sunlight outside of his studio. As the sun moves through the sky the amount of light hitting the prints changes, directly affecting the chroma of each frame. While the works in the exhibition are cyanotypes, Scott-Douglas regards them as "frames" because of their conceptual link to film rather than as strictly photographs or paintings.

Upon installation at Clifton Benevento, Scott-Douglas organizes his works based on their individual chromatic value. This amalgamation based on a formal quality in turn acts an index of the environmental, time-based conditions aiding the physical development of the work. Installed in such amanner so the perimeter of each object visually gestures to the adjacent frame, Scott-Douglas's works reiterate the formal notion of the dissolve and in turn completes an almost self-effacing act that makes each piece a part of a larger mise-en-scène rather than an independent object.

Whileevidencing pleasure in the pun between the film title, the exhibition title and the notion of work created from being placed in the sun, this body of work also illustrates a narrative of the movement of time, of the passing of afternoons.