Opening Reception: Friday, April 18, 6–8pm
Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Scott Covert in the North Room.
Since 1985, Covert has traveled around the world making gravestone rubbings on both canvas and paper in which he layers names and epitaphs into expressionistic compositions. His colorful arrangements frequently contain multiple individuals both famous and infamous, which he gathers from cemeteries in vastly disparate locations. This project is equal parts earnest homage, collection of celebrity ephemera, subversive performance art, and travel diary.
Covert realizes his “Monument Paintings” by mounting canvas over tombstones before using wax oil crayon in a frottage technique to transfer names and epitaphs to its surface. These canvases are often built up over the course of years, sometimes decades, as Covert makes multiple trips in order to gather all of the rubbings he deems essential. Rene Ricard once remarked that Covert essentially creates a printing press at each location. Once back in his studio, he further adorns the canvas with oil paint and sometimes glitter. When working on paper, he nods to 20th Century Op-Art by adding oscillating, irregular rectangles around the transfer.
Covert’s subjects are either singular in focus or are groupings of topically related or entirely disconnected folks who share one common denominator: they now belong to the earth. His singular subjects either stoically state a name once or echo it many times over. In his composite canvases, Covert’s subjects take on new lives and fraternize with lovers, peers, strangers, co-conspirators, and enemies in an eternal party of the passed.
Scott Covert (b. 1954, Edison, NJ) lives in New York, NY and works internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Derek Eller Gallery, (2023); Parker Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); Studio Voltaire, London, England (2023); NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale, FL (2022); F Gallery, Houston, TX (2020). Select group exhibitions include Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 Hands, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (2023); Brigid Berlin: The Heaviest, Vito Schnabel Gallery, New York, NY (2023); Agosto Machado: The Forbidden City, Gordon Robichaux, New York, NY (2022); Frederick Douglass: Embers of Freedom, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2019); and Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978-1983, curated by Ron Magliozzi and Sophie Cavoulacos with Ann Magnuson, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2017). His work is included in the collection of NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL. This will be his second solo exhibition at the Gallery.