Zachary Royer Scholz

Artist Statement:

I work collaboratively with pre-existing objects, sites, and cultural structures. I investigate situations and use what I discover to reshape them.  I alter and remake not simply to create new things, but to reveal the reciprocal flows through which we shape the world and the world shapes us. Individual pieces not only embody particular liminal states, but, like sticks in a stream, reveal otherwise unseen forces.  While made by me, my works produce suspended, contingent fields of meaning that are authored as much by viewers as by my subjective intentions. Each work adds to every other and to the space of understanding draped between them: act-to-act, idea-to-idea.  Together they form a complex constellation of relationships that exhibits diffuse rather than linear logic.  Working in this way manifests my belief that nothing is either permanent or discreet. With everything connected to everything else, we can only ever create temporary, situational structures that erode and reform endlessly.

Zachary Royer Scholz is an artist based in San Francisco California. His diverse artworks use sculpture, installation, drawing, video, and photography to investigate the shifting relationships between the material and meaning that surround us.   In addition to his art practice, Scholz is an active critic who writes regularly for Art Practical, and a range of other art publications.  Scholz received his BA from Stanford University and holds a MFA and a MA in Visual & Critical Studies from The California College of the Arts.  He has received numerous awards and residencies, most recently a Kala Art Institute Fellowship and Recology’s residency at San Francisco’s Waste Transfer Center.  Scholz’s work has been exhibited internationally, and is held in the permanent collection of Recology, Indiana State University, and Mess Hall’s Printed Materials Archive in Chicago.  Scholz’s past solo projects include exhibitions at, NOMA Gallery, Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, The Lab, Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Swarm Gallery, and David Sallow Gallery.  Scholz’s upcoming solo projects include exhibitions at Eli Ridgway Gallery in San Francisco and a public art project on BART commissioned by Invisible Venue.