Artist Gregory Scott at Arthur Roger Gallery

Gregory Scott Unites Magritte and Apple
by Doug MacCash, THE TIMES-PICAYUNE

Courtesy Arthur Roger gallery Notice the small painted rainbow kite in “Taxi” by Gregory Scott. It appears later as a live-action feature of the video.

What would surrealist René Magritte be doing if he were alive today? I bet he would be doing pretty much what Chicago-based artist Gregory Scott is doing.

New Orleans’ numero uno gallery director Arthur Roger called last month to tell me the artworks in his next exhibit were like nothing I’d ever seen before. He was right. Gregory Scott’s “paintings” are mind-bending blends of old-fashioned oil-on-canvas, color photography, and — thanks to embedded Apple computer screens — video snippets. The closest thing to Scott’s artworks I can think of are the newspapers in the Harry Potter movies, with their live-action illustrations.

To best enjoy Scott’s paintings, be sure to watch long enough for thse micro comedies, starring Scott, to play out.

For instance: Don’t take your eyes off of the syrupy Thomas Kinkade landscape until Scott’s angry, unseen lover tosses his clothes, guitar and TV set onto the idyllic front yard.

Don’t stop watching Scott and his digital doppelgangers climb the steps in the M.C. Escher-inspired piece until he sits down and dangles his feet over the edge of the staircase in a logic-defying position.

Don’t move your feet until you see Scott’s reclining nude twitch her toes.

Don’t run off until Scott runs down the country road trailing a rainbow kite

And don’t get off the track until the St. Charles streetcar cruises the cubist interior of Arthur Roger Gallery.

Like Magritte (1898-1967), Scott is an artistic trickster, toying with infinite mirror-within-a-mirror-within-a-mirror perspectives, impossible connections and compelling contradictions. I can’t ever remember digital art blending with traditional art this well.

Next, I’d love to see Scott impose his surreal self-portraits on outside-the-art-world subjects such as security cameras, television commercials, laparoscopic surgery, video games … the possibilities are as infinite as a pale blue sky with little white clouds.