Artist Statement
Douglas Scholes (b. 1962, Montreal, QC, Canada) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montréal, Québec. Working across sculpture, photography, video, and performance, Scholes explores the “pragmatic aesthetic”—the condition of things as they exist now—and the unseen cycles of labor that sustain our daily lives. His work often employs ephemeral or everyday materials, such as beeswax, to evoke subtle, poetic reflections on maintenance, impermanence, and the unnoticed elements of lived experience.
Both formal and concept based notions are brought together with commonplace ideas, acts and objects. The projects employ mundane and ordinary procedures and materials to address the fragile and changing nature of the condition of things and the desire/need to maintain that which is deemed valuable/necessary. Among the essentials are pragmatic, ludic, futile, and poetic elements used to reveal an optimism, conviviality, empathy, familiarity that may lie dormant, unsaid, unnoticed within everyday things and experiences.
Scholes’ work has been presented internationally and across Canada at venues including Robertson Arès Gallery (Montreal), Sporobole centre en art actuel (Sherbrooke), Université de Sherbrooke, Galerie McClure (Montreal), Musée Pointe-à-Callière (Montreal), Musée de Lachine (Lachine), Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge), SPACE Studios (London, UK), and Rad’Art (San Romano, Italy). He has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. His work is held in the Collection d’art public de l’arrondissement du Sud-Ouest de Montréal, and he is a member of the Centre de recherche urbaine de Montréal (CRUM).
Scholes’ work has been featured in the press including Radio-Canada; and The Montreal Gazette; Le Devoir, and art the reviews of ESSE magazine; Espace; Canadian Art, and the publications of Université de Sherbrooke; Foreman Art Gallery – Bishop’s University; Timidité des cimes, et al.
Douglas Scholes is represented by Robertson Arès Gallery – Montreal – Quebec – Canada
Contact by email: info at dougscholes dot ca