TONY SCOTT

The ongoing ‘Geometrics’ paintings, with their lustrous surfaces of pigment and glaze-covered joss paper, reveal Scott’s enduring fascination with the Modernist grid. With their repeated motifs of squares they reference Mondrian, Minimalism and the 20th century history of abstract painting. They may also be understood as a reference to the ancient geomancers’ grid of Beijing’s central axis, still today lying beneath the modern steel and glass city. In Beijing this grid is the basis of all journeys - north to south, and east to west. If Mondrian could make ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie’ after visiting Manhattan, perhaps behind the sheer beauty of works such as Scott’s ‘Geometrics’ numbers 16, 17 and 18 we can see an embedded grid of ancient hutong laneways and courtyards. 

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The ‘Temple’ series moves the formalism of the ‘Geometrics’ into something more meditative and contemplative. As in the Geometrics there are references to architecture, to the interlocking sequences of courtyards and pathways in a Buddhist temple complex, and to repeated rows of columns and gateways. More than this, though, there is a pervasive sense of calm and order – a hard-won treasure in the urban chaos of Beijing.