existence and change

Scott Charles Leichhardt Hollingsworth

“To exist is to change; to change is to grow; to grow is to continue to create oneself without end”
Henri Bergson

Scott Charles Leichhardt Hollingsworth’s body of work is change, just as life, a constant transformation. In his work the complex becomes simple and the simple complex, a contradiction, or not?

We don’t always see an artwork in the same way, the contemplation of these works is pregnant with our own state of mind.

The painting we look at today is not the same painting we saw yesterday, simply because we are a different person than the one we were yesterday.

And what do we feel when we see these works? They are the present moment, the channel of our emotions; today one might be lifted to happiness, and tomorrow dashed down to long hidden sadness.

In his exhibition Scott proposes a special relationship with his works, less rational, less conceptual and more sensorial. An abandonment to the pure contemplation of form and colour… when we look at these works the enjoyment is purely aesthetic, we don’t need to have special knowledge or training, only a desire to see.

It may seem the work presented here on this page share no common ground, but a closer look reveals them to be complementary, as if some were the original work and the other, an image reflected in a mirror.

On one hand colour invades the space, with a series of brightly coloured works, full of life and movement. Warm, alive and glowing and although the compositions might remind us of geometric abstraction, they move away from the cool and hiper rational nature that one would associate with this tendency, reaching textures of an almost organic nature, stemming from the use of multiple layers of superimposed colours. A long process of painting and repainting. He calls this work Abstract Pointlessism.

In this work, despite the appearence of regularity and sequential repetion, there is, in the painters actions, a desire to break with order. This is accentuated by the use of forms or words that could be considered irreverent, at the very least, and in this work make for an attractive and eccentric nod to the viewer

On the other hand, with the dyptychs, unpaintings, as the artist is calling them, the most recent work in the show, the work takes another turn. This is in as much for the technique employed as for the content and aesthetic.

Are these works woven from dreams, or perhaps from awakenings? Are they dreams that have been painted, or are they painting that has changed into dream?

Misterious and brooding, they are unsettling works, with great expressive force. Forms emerge from the darkness and become tangible, without losing their ethereal essence.

The work of Scott Charles Leichhardt Hollingsworth is something alive and won´t leave us indifferent. The viewer will identify with it or they will reject it. There is no objective explanation, this will always depend on the eye that contemplates the work.

Painting isn’t about an experience, it is an experience.
Mark Rothko

Texto; Gloria San Jose, Cultural commentator
Translation; Scott Hollingsworth

Comments

One response to “existence and change”

  1. Scott Charles Leichhardt Hollingsworth Avatar

    text written by Gloria San Jose Moya for the summer 2013 exhibition in Nando Argüelles Art Projects

you can say what you please, I will love you long time

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