scott wayne
indiana
Jun 2007
by richard speer
To call
multimedia artist Scott Wayne Indiana a Renaissance man is
only partially accurate. Yes, Indiana (no relation to Robert)
is eclectic in his interests and artistic output, but the
33-year-old’s work is so thoroughly, slyly contemporary, it
speaks more to Postmodernism than to Renaissance-style
heterogeneity. The Portland-based artist’s aesthetically
promiscuous mélange of painting, installation, and public art
has brought him increasing critical and popular attention in
the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Self-taught as an artist (he
also has degrees in philosophy, mathematics and education),
Indiana began painting at 25 and first blipped onto the
Northwest art radar in 2002 with a series of well-received
solo shows at Portland’s Everett Station Lofts. “I almost
consider that period to be the equivalent of a Bachelor’s in
Fine Arts,” he says today, “especially in the nuts and bolts
of the real-world art scene: curating, doing press, putting up
shows...” In 2005 he moved his studio across town and began
his “Horses Project” by chaining toy horses to metal rings on
Portland streets—rings once used to secure real horses in
Portland’s pioneer past. With its blend of history and whimsy,
the project galvanized the civic imagination and captured the
attention of the media. For the artist, the fun really began
when people he did not know started “pulling the horses’ heads
off, spray-painting them, and adding green grass or other
props underneath them. I realized that the participation
itself, and the freedom inherent in it, is essential in the
kind of projects I do.”
Last summer he and his wife,
writer and installation artist Harvest Henderson, installed a
39-foot-long chain on the Joshua Tree, CA., property of artist
Andrea Zittel. The aim of the project, the artist
explains, is for visitors to trek to the remote land and add
their own links to the existing chain. Other projects include
a coloring book of Northwest art scenesters, an installation
of 39 axes stuck in the ceiling of the Portland Art Center,
and “The Nachos Project,” wherein he and Henderson deliver
nachos to regional artists and help them eat them while
discussing art esoterica, while documenting the conversation
in any way the subjects choose. And then there are the plaques
Indiana and his collaborators installed this May in arts
districts in five cities: New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis,
Seattle, and Portland. Bearing such inscriptions as: “Kate
Moss is better than Donald Judd,” and “Beyonce is better than
Clyfford Still,” the plaques are intended as “flippant phrases
that speak to absurd comparisons and child-like art debates.”
Somewhere amidst all this mayhem lurks Scott Wayne
Indiana, the gifted abstract painter. When he chooses to
paint, he is capable of deploying an intuitive sense of
movement in invigorating compositions, his shellac drips and
graphite scribbles reminiscent of Cy Twombly and three Spanish
artists he cites as influences: Antoni Tŕpies, Antonio Saura,
and Manolo Millares. Of his own painting––which will be
featured at Little Bird Gallery in L.A. in November and next
spring at Ogle Gallery in Portland––he muses: “I love
painting, but I’m way more interested in approaching it from
angles that infuse the process with other aspects of the world
that would never be considered art genres. To truly have an
impact, art has to cross boundaries, open minds, and carve
into a new place. For someone to do that with ‘just painting’
requires pure and total genius. I’m just a hard worker with an
intuition I believe in.”
Jun 2007
by richard speer
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