Scotty So

Michael Reid Berlin is delighted to announce our first solo exhibition with Naarm/Melbourne-based contemporary artist Scotty So, one of the most exciting and distinctive voices in Australian contemporary art.

Described by Art Collector magazine in an expansive 2024 cover profile as “perhaps Australia’s most in-demand performance artist,” So works across various media – including photography, painting, sculpture, ceramics, video, installation and drag performance – to transform found, familiar and culturally resonant references into fictive and fabulous imagery that reflects on identity, performance and lived experience.

So’s work is represented in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, where he has featured in several landmark exhibitions, including the 2020 NGV Triennial, China: The Past is Present (2022), QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection (2022) and Melbourne Now (2023).

In 2024, the Art Gallery of Ballarat staged a major solo exhibition, debuting his Hai Kot Tou series alongside the newly commissioned video work Begonia Queens. Represented in Australia by MARS Gallery, he has also exhibited internationally with presentations in Hong Kong, China and Europe.

For his Berlin debut, So will present a selection of photographs from his 2022 Shungay series, which pools influences from Asian erotic painting, European Chinoiserie, Instagram makeup culture and contemporary gay identity. Within these richly staged portraits, clothing styles of the Song and Ming dynasties appear alongside allusions to folk tales such as the rabbit deity and the split peach, as well as queer cinematic touchstones including M. Butterfly – layering history, artifice and mythology in images that are playful yet precise, and deeply resonant.

All works are now available to preview and acquire by request.