Bold geometric letters in cream and red painted on foamcore, partially cropped at the edges against a teal background. The overlapping letterforms create visual ambiguity, with red portions layered beneath cream-colored shapes to suggest multiple readings of the partially visible text.

ARCHIE SCOTT GOBBER HAS ISSUES

Archie Scott Gobber

1/30/2015 – 3/14/2015

Press Release (PDF)

You know, it's easy to talk 'word play' when talking about Scott and his signs. That he'd punned that way and this way; that the paint and the words danced just right; that he'd cut off just enough… but I don't think I buy it. Not as the heart of this work, anyway.

'Word play' it isn't. It's the mixed up truths put plain. Put center. The double entendre's no damn joke: it is the issue.

Man, stuff's screwed. (Scott's got two different words he'd use, but I haven't the guts to write them.) Stuff's screwed and none of it is so simple that it can just be meme'd, shared, and scrolled away from. And if we're just answering one way, then we don't miss half the picture. We miss the whole thing. Don't blame the signs. You and I are the spin doctors. We whitewash one side of the trash heap and don't even know to see the other. You and me, buying the bridge off our evening pundit, the one who had himself bought the thing off someone else.

But these signs, in leaving room for us and ours, they hold the weird truths in all their mixed up glory. They're realities read raw on foamcore, one right on top of the other. They're protests painted plurally in marker.

Archie Scott Gobber has issues, but he sure knows how to paint 'em. Maybe this'll shake us up from our feeds, the reflections in our little vanity pools, the practiced harmonies of our preaching. Long enough, anyway, that you and I might recognize all the things we said in the first place. - Henry Fording Eddins

Exhibition Images ()

  • Gallery corner featuring two large wall-mounted signs with bold typography in navy blue and coral orange, each with partially obscured text reading "PROOF" and "BREATHE." A third sculptural element lies on the dark concrete floor in the foreground. Minimalist installation emphasizing layered meanings through fragmented words and strategic cropping.
  • Contemporary gallery installation featuring three wall-mounted text-based artworks in bold typography against white walls, with a colorful foam board construction on the dark floor displaying layered text in rainbow and black sections, accompanied by white paper elements.
  • A gallery wall displaying multiple painted signs and panels of varying sizes and colors, including red, turquoise, peach, and white, with text-based messages such as "JUST DO IT," "SNOW DEN," "KEEP CONCEAL AND CARRY ON," and other phrases arranged in an asymmetrical composition against a white wall.
Bold geometric letters in cream and red painted on foamcore, partially cropped at the edges against a teal background. The overlapping letterforms create visual ambiguity, with red portions layered beneath cream-colored shapes to suggest multiple readings of the partially visible text.

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