Jeff Scott
Surveillance
Tinney Contemporary is pleased to present SURVEILLANCE, a solo exhibition of new works by artist Jeff Scott. This evocative exhibition of photo and video works traverses the nocturnal landscape of suburban America, eschewing formal elements of image-making to create a shared anxiety-dream which seems to emanate from our collective unconscious.
Scott’s large-scale stills and video pieces defamiliarize the banal imagery of suburban life, borrowing from the visual language of film noir and video surveillance to interrogate notions of observation, viewership, and consciousness. Scott’s works reference American cinema and bring to mind the iconographic vision of Huston, Hitchcock and Lynch. In line with this tradition of excavating the human psyche (with a particular attentiveness to its fears), the viewer is indicted as voyeur in observation of these psychological nightscapes.
Scott’s large-scale stills and video pieces defamiliarize the banal imagery of suburban life, borrowing from the visual language of film noir and video surveillance to interrogate notions of observation, viewership, and consciousness. Scott’s works reference American cinema and bring to mind the iconographic vision of Huston, Hitchcock and Lynch. In line with this tradition of excavating the human psyche (with a particular attentiveness to its fears), the viewer is indicted as voyeur in observation of these psychological nightscapes.
Scott shoots with Leica and Nikon 35mm film cameras, then taking knives to his negatives and re-assembling them with splicing tape. He then prints these collages onto graph paper and re-photographs them using analog techniques, including mistakes and visual aberrations.
This evolution of process evokes a private psychodrama that draws viewers deeper and deeper into an unsettling vision of modern life—at once deeply familiar, yet uncannily difficult to place. The boundary between viewer and subject becomes increasingly blurred as we gain awareness of the ways in which we are observed, even as we observe. In each abstraction, we find shadows take on a certain menace, open windows are imbued with intrigue, traffic lights seem almost extraterrestrial—the fragmented and alienating landscape of Scott’s creation seems increasingly like our own.
August 1 - September 5, 2020
︎︎︎ Exhibition List
This evolution of process evokes a private psychodrama that draws viewers deeper and deeper into an unsettling vision of modern life—at once deeply familiar, yet uncannily difficult to place. The boundary between viewer and subject becomes increasingly blurred as we gain awareness of the ways in which we are observed, even as we observe. In each abstraction, we find shadows take on a certain menace, open windows are imbued with intrigue, traffic lights seem almost extraterrestrial—the fragmented and alienating landscape of Scott’s creation seems increasingly like our own.
August 1 - September 5, 2020
︎︎︎ Exhibition List