Whitehot Recommends: Michael Scoggins: Goose at Laney Contemporary

Laney Contemporary is pleased to present Goose, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with New York-based artist Michael Scoggins whose signature style adopts the youthful alter-ego Michael S. as an autograph for large-scale drawings in the form of a monumental, hand-written notebook page. A note can be both casual and layered with heartbreak and humor. Its disarming ephemerality packs an unexpected punch with shifts in scale that can transform the insignificant into the unforgettable. In a casual note, a clipped phrase or a torn page may carry heavy weight as Scoggins uses the graphite of the pencil to point us toward complex and often shared experiences including the inseparability between joy and grief. 

A hand-written note may be scribbled on a piece of scrap paper or carefully composed, but in Scoggins’ work every line, hole, tear, and image is carefully composed with each word or image drawn on the surface loaded with visual and meaningful intention. The works in Goose remind us of the powerful presence and importance of every day. A note is a single slice of thought transferred from one person to another or from one person to the world. Scoggins’ rearticulated large-scale version of the note reminds us that paper is personal. Intimate. Shared.

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