Scott Ogden and C.J. Pyle: Twisted

Ricco/Maresca Gallery is pleased to present Twisted: Scott Ogden, C.J. Pyle,an exhibition which brings together the work of two independent artists whose very different styles are based on a similar attention to an inked line. Pyle’s weaving lines form portraits made of winding knots, while Ogden’s measured straight lines integrate fluidly as intuitive shapes. In each, there is a strong sense of structure vs. chaos, negative vs. positive, intentionality vs. stream of consciousness, and macro vs. microscopic. The forms that evolve are both highly intuitive and extremely complex, as neither artist begins with a preconceived vision.

Scott Ogden was born in Oklahoma City, raised in Texas, and now lives in Brooklyn. He received a BFA from the University of Texas in Austin, attended the Skowhegan Artist Residency program in Maine, and received his MFA at Queens College in New York. After almost ten years of filming and editing, he completed the documentary MAKE in 2008, which chronicles the lives and art of Prophet Royal Robertson, Hawkins Bolden, Judith Scott, and Ike Morgan, four influential and complicated outsider artists. The film was screened at Ricco/Maresca Gallery in 2009, in conjunction with a four person exhibit of the MAKE artists. Recently, Ogden founded a skateboard company that treats deck graphics as works of art, and incorporates imagery from both self-taught and contemporary artists. In this series of drawings, he has restricted himself to using one of the simplest types of mark making possible – short, straight lines, which twist into extremely complicated organizations.