Remai Modern hosts first solo museum show by Walter Scott
- EFN Staff | August 12, 2018
Remai Modern is presenting the first solo museum exhibition of Walter Scott. Titled Betazoid in a Fog, the exhibition opens on August 10 and runs through October 21 in the Connect Gallery. This presentation of Scott’s work speaks to Remai Modern’s ambition to support emerging artists at pivotal moments in their careers.
Programming in the ground floor gallery connects new voices and new ideas with new audiences, and thanks to the generosity of TD is free to the public.
Scott works in a variety of media to explore social and emotional worlds. His practice includes drawing, sculpture, video, performance, and his critically acclaimed Wendy comic strip and graphic novels. Contemporary questions of representation and narrative construction are central to his work.
Curated by Rose Bouthillier, Curator (Exhibitions) at Remai Modern, Betazoid in a Fog features an installation of Scott’s new and recent sculptures. The exhibition is filled with traces of the body: pieces of clothing, locks of hair, cast limbs and skeletal frames. Exploring disembodiment and empathy, the works move between flat and full forms, feelings and modes of thought. They evoke the anxiety, duality and vulnerability that shape individual experience, while also creating space for new encounters and openness towards the unseen and unknown.
“Walter Scott’s work deftly speaks to the complexities of human experience, with a sardonic sense of humour and style,” said Gregory Burke, Remai Modern’s Executive Director & CEO.
“This will be Scott’s largest solo presentation to date, and we are delighted that our audience will be the first to experience his newest work.”
Scott will return to Remai Modern on Friday, September 7 for a live performance as part of the museum’s monthly Turn Out series. Based on his Wendy comic strip, the performance includes never-before-seen illustrations from his next book, and offers a humorous and self-effacing perspective on the graduate school experience. Scott earned an MFA from the University of Guelph in 2018, and he often draws on his own experience for Wendy. A conversation with Bouthillier will follow.
On Tuesday, September 11, the first of Scott’s book-length Wendy graphic novels will be the subject of the museum’s ongoing Artful Readings discussion group. “Walter Scott has a unique ability to move across different modes of expression. Yet all of his work shares a distinctive energy, a way of nimbly capturing the messy, absurd and personal,” said Bouthillier. “His work in sculpture has really expanded in the past few years, so this exhibition comes at an exciting moment. Scott is designing the entire installation, and the show unfolds as a series of encounters with unruly personas, feelings and states—there is a lot to wrestle with.”
Remai Modern’s presentation of Scott’s work is part of the TD Connect Program. TD’s gift of $400,000 supports programming for five years in the free ground floor Connect Gallery.