TV with Bullet Hole, 2006 - Limited Edition 22 of 25 Print

USA – Jeff Scott Studio is proud to announce his dramatic works of art, Vanishing America, Elvis: The Personal Archives and The American Cinema Paintings. With the cooperation of the Elvis Presley estate, Scott gained unprecedented access to Elvis’s personal possessions and property. After more than ten years, Scott presents Elvis: The Personal Archives, a complex series of original object artwork created from Scotts’ unique access to Elvis’s very private things. The way Scott juxtaposes Elvis’s favorite pistol and Federal narcotics badge reveals a fundamental rift between Presley’s rebellious reputation and his private obsession with police and authority. The Gold bedside telephone, the TV with a bullet hole shot through the screen, Elvis’s Thumbprint, and his Tennessee operators’ license provide a rare portrayal of Elvis’s inner life, placing the public man in an intimate context and elevating the commonplace to the level of worship. Scott uses Photogravure prints and Chromogenic surfaces to make physical objects out of Elvis’s original artifacts, thus allowing the viewer to experience the tactile sensation of interacting with Elvis’s personal things. Through this work Scott explores our complex relationship with modern celebrity culture and the ways in which our possessions and material objects outlive us to tell our story. While Scott finds the ordinary in the otherwise extraordinary, he also finds beauty and visual complexity in the story of America. Get caught in the vivid and captivating cinematic scenes that play out in The Cinema Paintings. Scott’s latest body of work examines dramatic scenes from the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, but could have been struck from today’s headlines. These gritty, enigmatic paintings focus on American film noir and mysterious cinematic locations with a charged undercurrent of foreboding action. The Cinema Paintings focus on Los Angeles and the sweeping landscapes of the American West, evoking a hidden crime culture that is provocatively cinematic and real. Scott uses graphic painting methods, seductive film language and edited compositions to create works that are transformative contemporary structures. Using acrylics, collage and mixed media, Scott reveals an idiosyncratic conversation between film, photography, and painting, combining them into new genres of modern art.