Troy Scat: SKIN + MASKS, KAVI GUPTA | ELIZABETH ST.

Troy Scat (b. 1992, USA) is a Los Angeles-based painter who mobilizes portraiture as a means toward expressing celebration, uplift, inspiration and sensuality.

Most of Scat’s paintings are self-portraits or portraits of his friends. Drafting is crucial to Scat’s process. However, even though his paintings begin as drawings taken from real life, Scat is equally interested in how real life subject matter can open doors to other types of aes- thetic experimentation.

“I’m good at copying things, and all of my work starts from sketching real world references,” Scat says. “But really I’m more aesthetically driven. For example, I’m really big on hair because I’m a fan of shape. Hair is mutable. It allows me to add some type of abstraction or expressionism to my work.”

Though his subjects are distinctly contemporary, Scat frequently brings additional content into his compositions in order to place the image outside of an obvious timeline or cultural context.

One illustrious example of this approach is a self-portrait Scat painted in which he is pictured smiling, with a gold tooth and gold septum rings, but is also wearing an Elizabethan ruffle collar.

Though culturally and temporally discordant, the jewelry, the gold caps, and the ruffle collar all exist simultaneously as both fashion statements and overt status symbols.

“When I started that painting I was drawing a hoodie,” Scat says, “but then the folds in the hoodie reminded me of those ruffle collars. It was a perfect visual device because I wanted to give the image a kingly feeling, a type of status associated with royalty. The gold tooth is also a Southern thing, so I’m blending these different times and places and cultures.”

Bringing such disparate elements together within his paintings, Scat creates new images that are not imme diately associated with a reductive culture or identity framework. Out of the resulting sense of surprise, a space is created for viewers to bring their own meaning and interpretation to the work, and for new visions of personhood to be imagined for the future.