SCOT HEYWOOD

SPEED OF LIGHT
July 13 - August 31, 2024

Santa Monica, California - William Turner Gallery is pleased to introduce two exciting debut exhibitions: Scot Heywood, Speed of Light and Jeff Overlie, Block Theory. The exhibitions will run from July 13th - August 31st, 2024.

Both artists present paintings that at first appear to adhere to the tenets of formal, hard-edged abstraction. Yet upon closer examination, one begins to see how their work challenges and often breaks with these assumptions. Both artists bring a subtle sculptural sensibility to their work, where shape and proportion provide the structural armature for color and upend expected formalities. 

Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Scot Heywood has been investigating geometric abstraction for over forty years. A self-taught artist, Heywood's works are indebted to the origins of geometric abstraction in such artists as Kasimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and John McLaughlin though he has crafted a thoroughly personal interpretation. 

In his multi-panel paintings, Heywood experiments with freeing art from the burden of the object, translating planes into elegantly composed geometric sections, each a variation on a theme. Reductive in nature, the subtleties of form and formal qualities of composition are paramount. Large in scale, he utilizes color-blocking of highly saturated panels in red, black, yellow, green and blue chromas, pristinely executed through layered, diagonal strokes. Heywood juxtaposes these fields of flat color, squeezing forms into tensions that often explode beyond the confines of their rectangular frames, activating the space and subverting the distinction between painting and sculpture. 

Exploring the relationships between shape, color, line, and space, Heywood's vocabulary reaches towards juxtaposing and distilling them to their essence. Extending beyond the rectangular confines of the canvas, the paneled reliefs disrupt the plane and the relationship of figure to ground, introducing a sculptural dimension. As Jody Zellen noted in Artweek, the inclusion of sculptural space allows for an exploration of “the relationships between presence and absence with respect to a given architectural space.”

Heywood has shown extensively in Southern California and since the late 1970’s including at Patricia Faure Gallery, Frank Lloyd Gallery, ACE Contemporary Exhibitions and Subliminal Projects Gallery. His work has been featured in over a dozen solo shows, and is often included in significant group exhibitions at The Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute and Otis College of Art & Design curated by David Pagel art critic for the Los Angeles Times. Heywood’s work has been featured in publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art Slant, LA Weekly and Artweek. His paintings are also represented in numerous collections, including the Frederick Weisman Foundation. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.