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scott b. davis | sonora
4 December 2021 - 22 January 2022

scott b. davis | sonora

Past exhibition
  • Overview
  • Works
  • Press release
  • Press
Overview
scott b. davis, saguaro in bloom, palomas plain, arizona 2021.
scott b. davis, saguaro in bloom, palomas plain, arizona 2021.

Marshall Gallery's inaugural opening at Bergamot Station, Santa Monica will be held on December 4th with a solo exhibition by San Diego-based artist scott b. davis and a discussion with special guest Virginia Heckert (Curator of Photographs, Getty Museum). Celebrating the much-anticipated release of davis’ first career monograph sonora published by Radius Books, the exhibition will survey the artist’s experimental desert compositions that push the limits of the platinum palladium process and in turn the tradition-laden genre of landscape photography. 

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Works
  • scott b. davis, ocotillo, arizona upland, 2013
    scott b. davis, ocotillo, arizona upland, 2013
  • scott b. davis, black mesa, western arizona, 2020
    scott b. davis, black mesa, western arizona, 2020
  • scott b. davis, box canyon, anzo-borrego desert, 2019
    scott b. davis, box canyon, anzo-borrego desert, 2019
  • scott b. davis, cinder cone, mexico, 2018
    scott b. davis, cinder cone, mexico, 2018
  • scott b. davis, copper mountains, yuma county, arizona, 2020
    scott b. davis, copper mountains, yuma county, arizona, 2020
  • scott b. davis, double negative (arch along the u.s. / mexico border), 2018
    scott b. davis, double negative (arch along the u.s. / mexico border), 2018
  • scott b. davis, double negative, sierra del rosario, 2019
    scott b. davis, double negative, sierra del rosario, 2019
  • scott b. davis, font's point, southern california, 1997
    scott b. davis, font's point, southern california, 1997
  • scott b. davis, mesa, new water mountains, arizona, 2018
    scott b. davis, mesa, new water mountains, arizona, 2018
  • scott b. davis, notch, western arizona, 2020
    scott b. davis, notch, western arizona, 2020
  • scott b. davis, ocotillo, ocotillo (no. 45), 2016
    scott b. davis, ocotillo, ocotillo (no. 45), 2016
  • scott b. davis, phases of the sun and moon, 2017-18
    scott b. davis, phases of the sun and moon, 2017-18
  • scott b. davis, pinnacle, 2020
    scott b. davis, pinnacle, 2020
  • scott b. davis, raven butte, 2020
    scott b. davis, raven butte, 2020
  • scott b. davis, ridgeline looking west and south, copper mountains, Arizona, 2018
    scott b. davis, ridgeline looking west and south, copper mountains, Arizona, 2018
  • scott b. davis, sandbar anza-borrego desert, 2018
    scott b. davis, sandbar anza-borrego desert, 2018
  • scott b. davis, sphere (i), 2018
    scott b. davis, sphere (i), 2018
  • scott b. davis, starlight above the colorado desert, 2016
    scott b. davis, starlight above the colorado desert, 2016
  • scott b. davis, tinajas altas mountain sand (i), 2020
    scott b. davis, tinajas altas mountain sand (i), 2020
  • scott b. davis, tinajas altas pass, southern arizona, 2020
    scott b. davis, tinajas altas pass, southern arizona, 2020
  • scott b. davis, winter ocotillo, 2020
    scott b. davis, winter ocotillo, 2020
Press release

Marshall Gallery is pleased to open a new exhibition space in Santa Monica's historic Bergamot Station with a solo showing of work by scott b. davis. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, December 4th from 4-7 pm with a discussion between davis and Virginia Heckert (Curator of Photographs, Getty Museum) at 4:30 pm.

Over the past two decades, scott b. davis has committed his creative process to a pair of key variables: The exclusive use of platinum-palladium media and a focus on the western landscape. As a result, he has developed an expressive photographic syntax all to his own. One of monochromatic warm impressions rendered along the extreme ends of the tonal spectrum. Otherworldly scenes alternate between impossibly dark, starlit nights and blinding daylit ridgelines, the scale and arrangement of which the viewer is left to decipher. Often presenting inverted and/or overlapping scenes, the artist chooses to "favor abstraction over representation," alternating between reality and fiction, emptiness and density.


Celebrating the much-anticipated release of davis' first career monograph, published by Radius Books, the exhibition will survey the artist's experimental desert compositions that push the limits of the platinum-palladium process and, in turn, the tradition-laden genre of landscape photography from the American West. Featuring many works from the publication and shown together for the first time, the exhibition intends to distill the unique visual aesthetic connecting davis' work, while inviting viewers to slow down and question his ghostly topographies and their inverse relationship to the hyper-fidelity of modern digital methods and romanticized historical renderings.

 

While too easily labeled as minimalist, davis' atmospheric prints display a subtle and elegant reticence, the lack of visual information as significant as its presence. At times appearing like extraterrestrial scenes beamed back from a million light-years away, they evidence an original artist with a keen eye for deceivingly complex compositions, often spanning multiple frames. Diptychs from the series half blind include pairings of positive prints and paper negatives made using large format cameras ranging from 4x5 inches to a laborious, hand-made 16x20. The prints require time for one's eyes to adjust to their binary palettes of light and dark which expand across a velvety, charcoal-like surface; Symbolic of the intense luminosity encountered in the remote deserts where davis explores along the western US/Mexico border. 

 

scott b. davis (American, b. 1971) is a leading figure in West Coast contemporary landscape photography and has exhibited widely since the late 1990s. His works are held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY), The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, CA), Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Kiyosato, Japan), and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO) among others. He is also the founder of Medium Photo, the annual photography festival held in San Diego, California, where the artist is based. 

Download Press Release
Press
  • ocotillo, arizona upland, 2013

    Museum Acquisition

    J. Paul Getty Museum acquires works by scott b. davis
    October 10, 2023
  • Review - scott b. davis | sonora

    Emily Capone, Musée Magazine, January 5, 2022

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