Scott McCarney
Table to Wall

August 26 - September 17, 2022

Photography and Artist Books

Table to Wall presents a pairing of small edition bookworks with related wall works and prints that span three decades of practice. Some of the prints were created as stand-alone pieces to represent bookworks in exhibitions where books were not able (or welcomed) to be exhibited. Others were designed to be displayed and experienced as a book as well as on the wall. This juxtaposition offers the viewer contrasting experiences of privately turning pages on a horizontal surface in tandem with the public viewing of images on a vertical plane.

Although the work predates COVID-19, it address issues heightened by social distancing and isolation: The translation and migration of real time to digital spaces; fear of the unknown in times of political turmoil; our relationship and proximity to the landscape; and the vagaries of interpersonal relationships.

Bookworks are compact and portable exhibitions in and of themselves, site-specific and responsive to the space and timing of a book. When experiencing a bookwork, the reader is static and the art moves through space at a pace determined by the reader. Wall works transpose this relationship as the art remains static while the viewer moves through space in relation to the works.

This is the third iteration of an installation bringing together individual works that had been previously displayed in different thematic group exhibitions. It is a curatorial feat that is part retrospective, part group show. For me, the process reveals new relationships, themes and formal strategies that otherwise would go unnoticed.

Artist Statement

Artists books have been the primary site for my art practice since 1980. The book provides a perfect form to combine my academic background in photography and design with a love for the corporeality of craft and philosophic possibilities of sculpture. The interpretive space of the book and the interaction of a reader engage my interest in communication as process and form. I’ve chosen to make artists books for practical as well as formal reasons: they are compact and easy to transport, access, and share; their history (and the parallel history of reading) is deep and saturated in social and cultural agency; and everyone has some relationship with a book (even if only as metaphor, I think, as I scroll and proof this text). Ultimately, for me, a book’s materiality and proximity to the reader offer a unique experience for expressing ideas quietly and with purpose.

Biography

Scott McCarney is an artist, designer, and educator living in Rochester, New York. He received his formal design training at Virginia Commonwealth University in the 1970s, and earned an advanced degree in visual studies from the University at Buffalo/Visual Studies Workshop in the 1980s. His work spans many media, from offset and digital printing to sculptural and site-specific installations. His bookworks can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and Yale University Art Gallery, among others. His work is shown internationally (Sao Paulo, Brazil; Melbourne, Australia; Baku, Azerbaijan) as well as closer to home (Hallwalls, Buffalo NY; Everson Museum, Syracuse NY; Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester NY). His teaching and lecturing itinerary is varied and eclectic, carrying the banner of artists books to Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Mexico, and South America. He kind of retired in 2020 after 16 years of teaching in the College of Art and Design at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Website: scottmccarneyvisualbooks.com