Leon Scott-Engel

I see my work as an assemble of fragments, all sharing a common denominator: figuration. The body acts as a zero-point, avoiding abstract re-invention and rather producing something more concrete; something we can all relate to physically. I use it as a way of contextualising a thought, or mental image, often one of the insular experience of the self, into something material. The various approaches to making converge through a choreography of space, with the viewer activating the works physicality. Activation is perhaps most relevant in the paintings. Bent, folded, deconstructed and extended, the canvas is entering space. No longer commanding a two-dimensional plane, but a three-dimensional space; the “Z” axis. The physicality of the stretcher twists it into a body, the wood the skeleton, the canvas it’s skin, the paint it’s soul. It is not just about how the eye responds, but how the body explores the work side to side.

Contemplative and soft, especially in contrast to the playful tropes emerging in the cast sculptural works, the paintings are shadows, echos of something past. They allude to a feeling or memory, but are equally ambiguous to avoid being didactic. Whether attached or placed in proximity, the oscillating reply of the surrounding sculptures ground the paintings into the real. When considering this choreography of fragments, the life casts are continously self referential. Frozen moments in time, their humour and nostalgia take the edge off of the paintings intensity, replacing it with irony. Its a fusion of sorts, between this history of British figuration and the dada-esque resurgence of the freeze generation. I become implicated in the dialogue present when I cast my body to create something, taking the memory and cementing it in the real.

A doppelgänger is emerging from within the practice. Leon Scott-Engel the artist battling the person. This imposter, made from the inorganic, copies me, assumes me, becomes me. Am I starring back, or someone else? Maybe both. Do I welcome them with open arms, or suppress them, harbouring them inside. All I know is they are growing stronger.