Streaming by Lamp and by Fire

Denny Gallery is pleased to present Streaming by Lamp and by Fire, a solo exhibition by Scott Anderson.

Scott Anderson’s process begins with a vestigial image or snippet of memory lingering in his mind. He then excavates these pre-existing images, searching for hidden possibilities and meanings within them and using them as raw material to develop new forms. The drama of his dreamy narratives take shape over time: he begins with drawing and sketches, and through the act of painting, further allows the images to become more ambiguous or transform into something the he could not have originally predicted. Anderson’s process is visible in the many different kinds of mark-making in oil crayon and oil paint and in the complexity of the resulting compositional space.

The title of Anderson’s exhibition of new paintings, Streaming by Lamp and by Fire, collapses three time periods- the contemporary, the modern, and the pre-modern- into one. This is analogous to the level of visual fluency, cultural literacy, and historical channeling currently required to be an art maker or viewer. Anderson’s evocative painting titles, such as “Spoon-Gazing/Shoe-Gazers” tend to arrive in the middle of his process, once he has started to see how the forms will function in the final painting. They are often also poetic, playful metaphors for the act of painting.

Scott Anderson received his BFA from Kansas State University and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and he attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Streaming by Lamp and by Fire is his second exhibition with Denny Gallery, following On the Nose, a two-person show with Austin Eddy in 2016. Anderson has had recent solo exhibitions at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas, Galerie Richard in Paris, and CES Gallery in Los Angeles. Anderson has participated in exhibitions at MCA Chicago, the Parrish Art Museum, The Warhol Museum, the Cranbrook Art Museum, and Kavi Gupta Gallery. His work has been featured in numerous publications including Artforum, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and New American Paintings. Anderson was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and The William and Dorothy Yeck Award. Anderson currently lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico and is an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts.