SALTWORKS is pleased to present Family Values, an exhibition of new works by New York-based artist, Michael Scoggins.  In Family Values, Scoggins continues his exploration of American society through the physicality of language and its mediums invoking thoughts of humanity, democracy and individual expression.  This is the artist’s third solo show at SALTWORKS.

Scoggins pushes the medium of paper to reveal its sculptural potential and visceral qualities evoked by its familiarity and makeshift plasticity. From his signature large-scale installation drawings of paper cut and lined to mimic the pages ripped from a notebook, Scoggins enters a new realm.  A new series of intimately-scaled works on archival paper, with an aesthetic and temporality more akin to common newsprint and butcher’s paper, Scoggins embeds terminology found in the political arena, with black charcoal and a heavy stroke. Visualizing the ability of language to project ideas, and how words can create or lose meaning through use.  Scoggins describes the work as follows: “The words have great meaning but that meaning has been diminished.  I try to physically show this through abusing the paper and the words.  Newsprint and Butcher’s paper is also disposable so these words are also placed in a fragile situation.  They are in constant peril of losing their true meaning.”

Michael Scoggins earned an MFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2006. In the summer 2003 he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. He has shown worldwide and has had solo exhibitions most notably in Atlanta, Miami, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Vienna and Seoul. In 2006, his work was added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art as part of The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection and Catalogue Raisonné, edited by Christian Rattemeyer. Scoggins resides and works in Brooklyn, NY. Scoggins is currently completing an artist-in-residency program at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Spring of 2011.