Geoffrey Todd Smith creates complex, rule-based abstractions that place him firmly within the orbit of modern American art, but with a wandering eye to the future. His vision is guided by self-imposed limitations that instill order to an otherwise meandering dream-like process. The result is a stylish eruption of concentrated color and form, enveloped in a hand-drawn web of doodled spikes and ruffles and embedded with a rhythmic plague of polka dotted interference. The playfully constructed titles for each work provide an additional climate of atmosphere and mood without completely revealing a narrative. Smith works with a range of media including gel pens, graphite, collage, enamel paint, acrylic and oil.
Says Smith, “Doodling within self-imposed limitations has long been my way to induce introspection and conjure new images. In these recent works on paper, wavy bands of color and curvaceous lines overlap repeatedly to create dense, fluttering spaces. A cursory Rorschach-like inspection provides the viewer an array of elusive possibilities: cartoon eyes throwing shade, biting mouths adorned with shark-like teeth and clownish smirks, butterfly wings, and veils of alternating microscopic and celestial forms. In the end, I play the role of a hard working spider, entombing shapes in a handmade, resonating web of spikes and squiggles.”
For Geoffrey Todd Smith, abstraction is an unreliable narrator. Like carnival music playing in a horror movie, his abstract drawings and paintings don’t accurately convey the mood of the moment. Rather than holding up the proverbial mirror to society, Smith’s images are more like funhouse mirrors, further distorting and guiding the viewer away from reality. Every decision in the development of his compositions is fraught with the worry that he’s not saying enough, quickly giving way to the alternative, that he may have revealed too much–therein lies the tension. These Rorschach-like blobs bubble up to induce a sense of familiarity, only to be met with uncertainty.
In a review of Geoffrey Todd Smith’s most recent show at Western Exhibitions in 2018, artist and critic Andrew Falkowski writes: “The quiet-loud intensity of Smith’s visual stimuli discourages the impulse to scan. Rather, we are invited to slow down, approach the work and investigate from an intimate range.”
Geoffrey Todd Smith’s work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Hallmark Inc., Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, the Jager Collection in Amsterdam, Soho House Chicago, the South Bend Art Museum in Indiana, and Harper College in Illinois and has been shown at Luis de Jesus Gallery and Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles; Hyde Park Art Center, the Union League, DePaul Art Museum and Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago; The Hughes Gallery in Australia; The Green Gallery in Milwaukee; The Front in New Orleans; Illinois State Museum, and the Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois. He has been written about in New City, The Seen, New American Paintings, Bad at Sports, art ltd, Juxtapoz, Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Magazine. Smith is represented by Western Exhibitions and he lives and works in Chicago.