TWISTED: SCOTT OGDEN, C.J. PYLE
June 23 – August 19, 2011
Opening Reception: Thurs, June 23, 6-8PM
Ricco/Maresca Gallery is pleased to present “Twisted: Scott Ogden, C.J. Pyle,” an exhibition which brings together the work of two independent artists whose very different styles are based on a similar attention to an inked line. Pyle's weaving lines form portraits made of winding knots, while Ogden's measured straight lines integrate fluidly as intuitive shapes. In each, there is a strong sense of structure vs. chaos, negative vs. positive, intentionality vs. stream of consciousness, and macro vs. microscopic. The forms that evolve are both highly intuitive and extremely complex, as neither artist begins with a preconceived vision.
Scott Ogden was born in Oklahoma City, raised in Texas, and now lives in Brooklyn. He received a BFA from the University of Texas in Austin, attended the Skowhegan Artist Residency program in Maine, and received his MFA at Queens College in New York. After almost ten years of filming and editing, he completed the documentary MAKE in 2008, which chronicles the lives and art of Prophet Royal Robertson, Hawkins Bolden, Judith Scott, and Ike Morgan, four influential and complicated outsider artists. The film was screened at Ricco/Maresca Gallery in 2009, in conjunction with a four person exhibit of the MAKE artists. Recently, Ogden founded a skateboard company that treats deck graphics as works of art, and incorporates imagery from both self-taught and contemporary artists. In this series of drawings, he has restricted himself to using one of the simplest types of mark making possible – short, straight lines, which twist into extremely complicated organizations.
C. J. Pyle was born in Richmond Indiana, and worked as a professional musician since the age of 16, touring extensively and playing sometimes over 300 shows a year. In the late 1980s, he began working commercially, drawing cover designs for a weekly Indianapolis newspaper. This work was very successful, earning him further commissions from Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, and Sports Illustrated, Verve, and Atlantic Records. Since 2000, Pyle’s signature style has evolved, distinguished by sinewy, rope-like lines coil delicately to form faces, giving way at times to finely shaded twists or smooth facial features, and the occasional appearance of a cool, clear eye. Each of his portraits is rendered over the course of 4 to 6 weeks, using colored pencil and ballpoint pens on the inside of record jackets.
