Collection: Scott Listfield - Suns and Moons

Suns and Moons is a new series of paintings by Scott Listfield. This group of paintings continues Listfield’s theme of allowing an astronaut to provide mute commentary on what is going on around them, which is largely based on what is going on around us. These new paintings are heavily influenced by Listfield’s feelings at our current stage of the COVID pandemic.

Opening reception: Dec 4th, 6 - 9pm.

This exhibition will run from December 5th - December 24th and will coincide with Jesús Aguado's show The Joker God, Kim Evans' Mother Tongue & Ryan Pola's show Full Bloom.

Listfield has traveled extensively, and exploration has always been an important theme in his work. In the COVID era, that exploration has largely been interior. In early 2020, he made paintings that tried to make sense of a world that seemed to be crumbling around him. Around the middle of 2020, he made a series of paintings about his mental state crumbling as he lived largely confined to home, secluded and shuttered away from friends and family. Then, finally, a few tentative steps outside refreshed his outlook, and he made some paintings that felt like spring: a rebirth, flowers and nature and animals blooming anew again. Since then, he has settled into the fits-and-starts stage of this global pandemic, now stretching beyond a year and half long, where things are good and then bad, open and then closed. The “return to normal” we were all yearning for hasn't quite materialized and maybe never will.

During this period, Listfield has increasingly been drawn to visuals based deeper in science fiction. He has long been influenced by classic sci-fi illustrations of the past, but he has usually painted his astronaut into a landscape more closely resembling present-day Earth or, at the very least, a future or past not too far off from our own. But Listfield has been craving escapism, and so in his latest show, he has let his astronaut wander a vaguely spacey and cyberpunk world, filled with sprawling cities, roiling clouds, concrete forms, floating objects and, yes, suns and moons. It's a bright, electric world that might be a different version of our own or might be some far-off place. It's a place he wanted to visit and spend some time, even if he didn't leave his house to do so.

Listfield grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and studied at Dartmouth University (New Hampshire) as well as in Italy. He is based in Los Angeles, California. His work is regularly shown internationally and has been featured in Wired Magazine, Juxtopoz, and The Boston Globe.