JANUARY 22 – MARCH 6, 2019

Opening Reception with the Artist
Wednesday, January 22, 6 – 8 PM

SOCO Gallery is pleased to present In The Light Of Unlearning, artist and musician Scott Avett’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery. A public opening reception will be held at the gallery on Wednesday, January 22 from 6 – 8PM.

Scott Avett is a printmaker, painter, writer, and musician working and living in North Carolina. He is the co-founder of internationally acclaimed band The Avett Brothers and has also been working privately as a visual artist since earning his BFA in 2000. The exhibition at SOCO Gallery follows the artist’s first solo show at the North Carolina Museum of Art which opened in the fall of 2019.

The artist’s journals - informal studies and sketches from the road and at home - are the foundation for the work included in the exhibition. “The drawings are often self portraits or room scapes of hotels or houses I stayed in. A bathroom mirror with sink, a tv, a lamp, arbitrary experiences at the time. A mountain of scribbling doodles.” Large scale paintings reference these original moments, with backgrounds resembling the lined legal pads containing the initial sketches, but now monumental, painted in oil.

Intimate portraits of friends and family will be included alongside the journal paintings. Drawing deeply from Mysticism, the idea of “oneness”, the unknowing and the natural world, the artist aims to illustrate experiences and stories from his life (rather than the people or places depicted within). In The Light Of Unlearning examines Avett’s process as an artist and how the artwork is ultimately a visual representation of experience and the connections between us all.

“Where once I felt certain that this was all about learning new things that would support and be followed by newer “new things” until the layers of complexity made me whole, now I see that it is all about unlearning old things to reveal who I am. My hardest work is before me–that which is taming my overactive drive to create and identify myself through it. These works are being created in that light...In The Light Of Unlearning.”

Scott Avett (American, B. 1976)

Scott Avett is a multimedia artist whose figurative works explore banal, yet simply beautiful phases and moments in time. His process blends materials and techniques used in screen printing, block printing, and painting, producing richly textured, intimate portraits of those closest to him. Drawing inspiration from literature, his spiritual roots, musical upbringing, and heritage, Avett archives and preserves shared human experiences and life cycles that emerge from his own life. Avett received his BFA in Painting from East Carolina University and has exhibited his work in New York, Southampton, and Charlotte, among other cities. Avett has been a member of The Avett Brothers band since he founded the group in 2000 along with his brother Seth. The artist currently lives and works in Concord, North Carolina.