Renowned Atlanta artist Scott Ingram brings his famed nail polish drawings for his first solo show at Emily Amy Gallery through Jan. 28. Appealing to the right and left brain with their sheer joy of color and also geometry of lines and grids, these images tend to stop viewers in their tracks. Simple yet complex, controlled yet unscripted, Ingram plans the lines, spacing and color to some degree, but in the end the dripping color tracks are self-determined in their paths. Inspired by Ellsworth Kelly’s “automatic drawings” as well as the works of Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland, these works clearly riff on the modernist canon.

But there’s also another intriguing element. They drawings are made with real nail polish. Ingram explains, “I had thought about using model car enamels, but the nail polish being a ‘feminine’ material was simultaneously sexually charged in the completely opposite way as the ‘masculine’ hot rod and sports car enamels. I felt the drawings were moving in a direction that directly reflected the cocaine culture of the art, fashion and celebrity world with the stiletto thin lines.”

Fashion and serious modern art referenced in the same work? We’ll take it!

As published in Luxecrush by Nancy Staab.