Walter Scott at COOPER COLE

COOPER COLE is pleased to present Extension of Doubt, a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Walter Scott.

Scott’s interdisciplinary practice spans drawing, sculpture, performance, and writing, and asks critical questions around representation, cultural production, narrative construction, and popular culture. The broad range of media that Scott works in allows him to manipulate and move between modes of representation according to the subject matter he is addressing. The works on paper in this exhibition are self-referential drawing-collages that depict satirical scenarios involving the artist’s own works. Photographs of his sculptures and recent installations are embedded in larger drawings that reflect on the rhetoric that surrounds art works. In many instances, Scott positions photographs of his sculptures in optical spaces that are separate from the main narrative, for example in thought bubbles or taped up on a canvas. At the same time, his sculptures act as characters in the drawings that are reified, fictionalized, and criticized. In doing so, the artist renders multiple vistas in single works that reflect on the context and narrativization of cultural production, while critiquing the institutions that generate these spaces.

In this series Scott gestures to both his conceptual and satirical practices by incisively placing them in dialogue with one another. Recalling his comic book series Wendy, which tells stories about a young woman in the art world, in Extension of Doubt Scott creates characters that represent the voices that surround his work: critics, curators, installers, and the artist himself. However, the artist explains, these characters, including Wendy, are all stand-ins for aspects of himself. The images combine snippets of lived experiences, and slip between reality and fiction. Emphasizing this subversive narrative approach, Scott formally collapses the perspectives of the picture planes, inverting and reconfiguring the way we read the images temporally. The title of the exhibition, Extension of Doubt, meditates on the role of doubt that surrounds the art object during its display and creation.

Walter Scott (Canadian, b. 1985) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes drawing, writing, video, performance and sculpture. He received his Bachelor of Arts at Concordia University and his MFA at the University of Guelph. He has had recent solo exhibitions at I.S.C.P. Brooklyn, New York (2019); Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (2018); Erin Stump Projects, Toronto, Ontario (2018); and Plug-In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, Manitoba (2017). Some recent group shows include Fermenting Feminism, Access Gallery, Vancouver (2019); This is Serious: Canadian Indie Comics, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton (2019); Common Place: Common-Place, Art Museum of the University of Toronto, Toronto (2019); The World According to Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preference, Franz Kaka, Toronto (2018); Propped, Oakville Galleries, Oakville (2017); and Wood Land School: Drawing a Line from January to December, SBC, Montreal (2017).

Walter Scott, Extension of Doubt, 2020, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto

Walter Scott, Poetic, Associative, VAGUE., 2019 , Acrylic, ink, colored pencil, collage on paper, 17 x 14 in (43.2 x 35.6 cm), 19 x 16 in (48.3 x 40.6 cm) Framed

Walter Scott, Extension of Doubt, 2020, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto

Walter Scott, Where is the Poison, 2019, Acrylic, ink, colored pencil, collage on paper , 17 x 14 in (43.2 x 35.6 cm), 19 x 16 in (48.3 x 40.6 cm) Framed

Walter Scott, Spectre of the Subject, 2019, Acrylic, ink, colored pencil, collage on paper , 14 x 17 in (35.6 x 43.2 cm), 16 x 19 in (40.6 x 48.3 cm) Framed

Walter Scott, The Writer’s Table, 2019, Acrylic, ink, colored pencil, collage on paper , 14 x 17 in (35.6 x 43.2 cm), 16 x 19 in (40.6 x 48.3 cm) Framed

Walter Scott, Extension of Doubt, 2020, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto

Walter Scott, Daydream, 2019, Acrylic, ink, colored pencil, collage on paper , 17 x 14 in (43.2 x 35.6 cm), 19 x 16 in (48.3 x 40.6 cm) Framed

Walter Scott, Reading Kathy Acker, 2019, Acrylic, ink, colored pencil, collage on paper, 14 x 17 in (35.6 x 43.2 cm), 16 x 19 in (40.6 x 48.3 cm) Framed

Walter Scott, Extension of Doubt, 2019, Acrylic, india ink, colored pencil, collage on paper , 17 x 14 in (43.2 x 35.6 cm), 19 x 16 in (48.3 x 40.6 cm) Framed

Walter Scott, Extension of Form, 2019, Acrylic, ink, colored pencil, collage on paper , 17 x 14 in (43.2 x 35.6 cm), 19 x 16 in (48.3 x 40.6 cm) Framed