HALSEY MCKAY is excited to present An Ode to No One, the first solo exhibiton in the United States by Scottish artist Steven Cox. Through horizontal and vertical repetition of color, pattern and layering Cox explores the possibilities of the linear stripe as the exhibition’s visual motif. Each painting owns similar processes and techniques, though their consciously restricted palette has encouraged the artist to deconstruct and reconstruct the canvas plane into dazzling visual depth and texture. The paintings nod to poetic structures like stanzas, as flat monochrome planes are aligned alongside spray painted gestural marks and densely layered surfaces of oil and negative space. Cox pays homage to his Scottish roots through his physical use of Hessian Jute for material as well as with painting tiltles: Cutty Sark, Ay Waukin and Rantin’ Rovin, Rantin Rovin that reference Scottish poet, Robert Burns. The beautiful, battered and wise surfaces of these delicately labored paintings share a kinship with the emotional polarities of Burn’s classic writings.
Steven Cox was born in 1986 in Aberdeen, Scottland and is now based in Edinburgh. He holds a BFA from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory & Curating from Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh. Recent exhibitions have been at The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, 99 Hanover Projects, The Old Ambulance Depot, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and The Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. Cox has curated, written and conducted interviews with many leading contemporary aritsts under the moniker Hunted Projects.