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John Scott

March 7, 1998 - May 31, 1998

AWE Gallery

John Scott was born in Windsor in 1950. He lives in Toronto and teaches at the Ontario College of Art. He has been an active artist since the early seventies and has exhibited widely. Much of John Scott’s work is influenced by his years growing up in Windsor – its factory life, industrial landscape and car culture.

The first John Scott solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Windsor includes drawings, sculpture and installation. Scott’s work expresses the power, violence, destruction and anxiety of our technological world. He is most noted for an expressionist drawing style of rapid, bold gestures portraying man-rabbit characters and sinister machines. The sense of raw energy and urgency in these drawings is also evident in sculptural works such as TransAm, a symbol of power associated with macho men, has the words of St. John the Evangelist from the new testament Book of Revelations scratched into its painted surface. This so-called “muscle car from hell” has been transformed into a modern day messenger of the apocalypse, an appropriate gesture as the millennium approaches. Scott recognizes the widespread obsession with apocalyptic themes in popular culture, such as among heavy-metal youth subcultures. The artist relates these issues to questions of masculine identity.

The artist produced several new works for the exhibition including an altered motorcycle and new versions of TransAm Apocalypse and 100 Workers, and installation of 100 silkscreened prints of hands, roses and skulls made to commemorate 100 works who ahve died from industrial accidents and disease in our region.

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