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NADA Miami

Sally Scopa

December 3 – 7, 2024

Booth D100

Ice Palace Studio, Miami, FL

Sally Scopa Fruiting Body, 2024 Acrylic on canvas 24 x 30 in

These paintings are from a new series of work titled Rube’s Orchard presented during Art Basel Miami at the NADA Art Fair with Oolong Gallery.


In her latest abstract works, Sally Scopa thinks through the creativity, seasonality, and strangeness of being in a body. In Upside-down Orchard, spherical, fruit-like forms float upwards and draw the viewer's eye around the scene. The piece is a meditation on what it means to nurture something outside the self, whether painting, plant or loved one. For Scopa, painting brings a sense of stillness, excitement, and an awareness of the body; her work is an invitation to share in this focused state. Her paintings take shape through a process of layering, erasing back down to excavate previous layers, and allowing moves to accumulate intuitively, each in response to the one before.

Sally Scopa Inverted Orchard, 2024 Acrylic on canvas 20 x 16 in

Sally Scopa Upside-down Orchard, 2024 Acrylic on canvas 20 x 16 in

Scopa’s paintings often have a shallow or artificial depth, almost like the simulated space of a game or a maze, inviting the feeling that a viewer could wander around inside and that a spirit of playful openness is enough to approach these works. Rube Goldberg machines, aquariums, molecular diagrams of the human body, and geographical strata all form starting points for her paintings which, through a process of slow tuning, gradually become abstract enough to hold many different associations.

Sally Scopa Wave Breaking, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 20 x 16 in

Sally Scopa is a painter based in Bellingham, Washington, where she teaches at Western Washington University. She runs Queen—a project space with the dimensions of a queen-sized bed—out of her home. The space supports emerging artists in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Scopa has been awarded residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, SOMA in Mexico City, and the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, France. Recent shows include a a solo exhibition at Oolong Gallery (San Diego) and a two-person exhibition at el Museo de la Ciudad (Querétaro, MX) with Carlos Vielma, as well as group exhibitions at 550 Gallery (New York) Ladies’ Room LA (Los Angeles) and Radio28 (Mexico City). Scopa holds a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University and an MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University. She is originally from San Francisco, California. 

Sally Scopa Empty Tank, 2024 Acrylic on canvas 10 x 8 in

List

Images: Rodrigo Gaya

Oolong Gallery

6030 La Flecha, Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067

Telephone +1 858 229 2788  Mobile +1 917 340 0877

www.oolongallery.com

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