Scott Ashley

Scott Ashley, Days Of Comfort, 2022, Acrylic, 48 x 72 In.

Scott Ashley, The Elephant, Carpet and Mixed Media, 68” h x 78” w x 58” d Inches. The title “The Elephant” refers to the " Elephant in the Room " which is an English metaphorical expression for an obvious truth that is either being ignored or intentionally forgotten. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious subject no that one wants to discuss. This sculpture is a physical, visual representation of the volatile political and racially uneven global environment.

Scott Ashley, Reflection I, 2015, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas, 60" x 48"

Artist Statement

In this series of drawings, I am using tally marks to visually represent the passage of time. Elements of the figures and the landscapes depicted are formed through the accumulation of the marks, replacing, in some cases, strands of hair and blades of grass. The marks also represent the accumulation of experience that occurs over time both physically and psychologically. These drawings represent feelings of longing loss, waiting for events to come or pass and how those events manifest themselves as scars and memories. Here, as in my sculptures, I am incorporating common everyday objects and simple figures and making them absurd by changing the context, scale, and function. I often use cartoon like imagery and a visual sense of humor in my work. I feel the humor of an absurd shape or situation allows an immediate point of access to the work where the underlying, darker and more serious themes of the work can be considered. Scott Ashley 2018

Scott Ashley Makes His Conceptualism Personal By Donald Miller The Apology

Some of the quixotic spirit of René Magritte, the late Belgian surrealist, may be found in conceptual artist Scott Ashley, whose work is exhibited at the Aldo Castillo Gallery in the Miromar Design Center, located in Estero, Florida. The Apology , for instance, a sculpture depicting an improbably hinged knife, not only reflects Magritte’s distortion of reality but also his sense of humor. Similarly, Ashley’s image, Aldo Castillo says, also humorously stands for the times when a person might like to kill someone but wisely holds back for a multitude of reasons. The work is somewhat characteristic of the visual play Ashley, a 40-year-old Chicagoan, likes to infuse into his art. “The knife is many things: a weapon, a domestic tool and can even be seen as a phallic symbol,” he suggests. “I feel the knife is a visual representation of an aggressive act, sexual or otherwise. And that, after the incident, one would want to retract: an apology for transgressions on another person. “The knife belonged to a longtime friend of mine,” Ashley continued. “I wanted to make it as a sculpture and asked him if I could use it. He said no but I used it anyway. It was perfect for the piece! He was a little upset at first but got over it after he saw the work in a museum exhibition. The Apology was also viewed online and inspired a Chicago theater to perform a play about it. To promote the play the knife was exhibited at Aldo’s gallery in Chicago which led to many other galleries showing it,” Ashley recalled. “Since then, Aldo has promoted my art more than anyone. Aldo is amazing in that he loves art and artists but is very inclusive in his vision, something that is rare in the art world.” Ashley recalled his visit to Castillo‘s galleries in the Miromar Design Center and lecturing there about his personal vision and art. “Many people think because the work I make is often dark I am unhappy but that is not the case,” the artist says “I am attracted to the absurdity of existence, the complexity of the human experience and I try to make work that points those things out. The results can be awkward and painful at times but that is what makes it wonderful.”

Consider for example, Ashley’s challenging paintings Logic and Lust. Somewhat like David Hockney, who made mirrors of Mylar because this reflective sheeting does not steam up during a shower, Ashley brought two large target images into his bathroom and discovered his reflection with them in a mirror. They are bold and unflinching depictions that can be interpreted variously, as both threatening or amusing. In any case, they are powerful and difficult to overlook or forget. Ashley has been helped by his mentors during the years he has been associate director of Chicago’s well-respected Perimeter Gallery, which for some thirty-five years has showcased paintings, sculpture, ceramics and weavings. “This has inspired me to see all of the arts together, not separately, that I continue to do,” says the artist. Although he has been invited several times to exhibit his own work in the gallery where he is employed, Ashley has always resisted doing so as a matter of personal integrity and to avoid a conflict of interest. Yet he praises Perimeter’s owners, including a Johnson Wax heiress, for their long dedication to him as well as their private purchase of his work. Seeing the consistent display of different forms of art encouraged Ashley to incorporate everything he could get his hands on for his own art. He grew up in Washington State’s wine country forty years ago. While studying at the University of Washington School of Art, Ashley not only became a fine printmaker but also began to incorporate his love of unusual art media into his work. This continued with his master of fine arts studies at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N.Y. Scott Ashley transforms our accepted understanding of objects into further extremes, Castillo notes. “Ashley has hand-knitted garden hoses, added neon light to garden spades and has fumigated doll houses. At the Julie Keyes Gallery in New York, “he showed his more elaborate work, such as ‘Talent Possessed,’ an installation consisting of an electric guitar infused with verbal curses from a Haitian voodoo shaman. It was exhibited along with the guitar’s case, an amplifier and letters in neon tubing.” One of Ashley’s finest pieces is a spinning disco ball pierced by arrows. It is called “Saint Sebastian,” after the early martyred Christian youth. Today the saint has become a widely used metaphor of the gay community. Donald Miller has reviewed art in Naples for fifteen years, after thirty-three years as a critic at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

About Scott Ashley

Conceptual artist Scott Ashley is known for using everyday objects and familiar cultural constructs to create provocative, emotionally charged multi-media works that challenge our personal and societal perceptions. Scott Ashley transforms our learned archetypes and paradigms into “ extreme versions of themselves” . From hand knitted garden hoses and neon shovels to fumigating doll houses and cursed electric guitars he uses varied means to bring his concepts into the audiences’ view. When observing the multi-media works from Scott Ashley, one can clearly see an understanding of vast and varied materials and processes. His work, though often critical, is not cynical and seems to come from a determination to express the personal, emotional and psychological states we all experience and also the deep connections we all have to the material world. Scott Ashley’s work simultaneously examines the cognitive world and the physical world. The results are strange and sometimes humorous manifestations that seem to have a foot in both realms. While studying at the University of Washington, School of Fine Arts Scott Ashley developed a fascination with expressing these types of concepts through a multimedia approach; incorporating his love of sculpture, painting, printmaking and fiber art. This approach was continued in his MFA studies of New Forms in New York at the Pratt Institute of Fine Art. Here he refined his approach to conceptual art; enjoying a new challenge with each project and learning to work with a different material allowing him to discover a new interpretation of the subject.

A solo exhibition of Scott Ashley’s at Julie Keyes Gallery in New York personified this way of working. Entitled “Adaptation”, the show featured some of his more elaborate work such as “Talent Possessed”, an installation containing a cursed electric guitar, guitar case, amplifier and neon letters. The guitar was taken to a Haitian voodoo priest who installed a soul into its mechanics. The guitar went through a week long, very involved, ritual ceremony and at its completion the guitar possessed a new soul. This piece is a great example of how his works incorporate the cognitive and material worlds. The audience has a familiar connection with the guitar and its cultural meanings, which were transformed through the artist direction and ritual ceremony into a guitar with supposedly supernatural powers. This was presented in the gallery in a way that raised the question ‘what is “talent” in our mass consumer culture?’Leading the audience down the path of ‘Is it something that is only inherent or something that can be, by various means, manufactured?’ The work “St. Sebastian” is another installation piece from this exhibition that demonstrates the interplay between familiar object, personal connection, cultural meaning, and transformation. St. Sebastian was a Catholic martyr who was persecuted for his beliefs and shot with arrows. Throughout art history he has been portrayed as a nubile youth who was bound and shot with arrows. This representation in conjunction with the idea of being persecuted for thinking or being different have led to St. Sebastian being appropriated as a gay icon. In this installation we see a giant disco ball shot with arrows, which is spinning and reflecting light all across the gallery playing with the themes of familiar objects, the audiences personal association to the object, the cultural meaning and then the artist transforming into a concept higher than its material parts. Born in Boston, raised in Seattle and now residing in Miami, artist Scott Ashley gained notoriety for his re-appropriation of everyday objects. Ashley has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in the permanent collection of he Racine Art Museum and RAM’s Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts located in Racine, Wisconsin. With BFA degrees in printmaking and sculpture from University of Washington and an MFA in New Art Forms from Pratt institute in New York. The Aldo Castillo Gallery exclusively represents Scott Ashley. RESUME Education Pratt Institute, New York Master of Fine Arts, New Forms - Sculpture University of Washington, Seattle Bachelor of Fine Arts, Sculpture Bachelor of Fine Arts, Printmaking Grants and Awards 2008 City of Chicago , Department of Cultural Affairs Grant Recipient 2009 Featured Artist for Chicago Artists Month Exhibitions Solo Exhibition – Hinge Gallery, Chicago - 2011 Shanghai International Art Fair – Shanghai China, 2011 Art Formulations – Group Show - Platform Gallery, Miami, Curated by Aldo Castillo ARTMRKT - Patradjas Gallery – San Francisco, CA and Art Hamptons, NY 2011 Art Chicago – Patradjas Gallery – Chicago 2011 Solo Exhibition, Julie Keyes Gallery, New York, NY January 2011 Aldo Castillo Gallery, Palm Beach Art Fair, January 2011 Solo Exhibition, Kavachnina Contemporary, Miami, November 2010 Voices – Miami, Seriously Speaking, Curated by Aldo Castillo, Space 4004 Miami, 2010 Featured Artist, Next Generation, Miami International Art Fair 2010 Solo Exhibition, IUN Gallery for Contemporary Art, 2009 Art On Track , Mixed Media Installation in a Chicago El Train Car, Oct 2009 Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation's, CIFO, Group Show, Miami FL, 2009 Critical Times, Two Person Exhibition, Aldo Castillo Gallery, May 2009 Hyde Park Art Center Day of the Dead, Group Show, Oct. 2008 Aldo Castillo Gallery, Group Show, Sept. 5, 2008 Chicago IL Solo Exhibition, Rockford Gallery for Contemporary Art , Rockford IL, 2008 Solo Exhibition, Dysfunctional Objects, Aldo Castillo Gallery, , June 13th – July 20th, 2008. Chicago, IL Aldo Castillo Gallery, Group Show, Chicago IL, 2007 Exhibited at SOFA CHICAGO by Aldo Castillo Gallery, 2007 The Polish Museum of America, J-Walking Group Show, Chicago IL, 2007 Life Bomb Gallery, The World is Flat, group show Berlin, Germany 2006 Rockford Art Museum, group show, Rockford IL, 2006 Susquehanna Museum of Art, group show, Harrisburg PA, Oct 2005 Collections Racine Art Museum