Galleries One & Two
Geoffrey Todd Smith continues the 2015 fall art season for Western Exhibitions with a solo show presenting an eclectic group of anecdotal abstract paintings. For the time being, Smith has set aside the fetishistic drawing style he has cultivated since 2001 in favor of equally rigorous and sumptuous, hand-painted surfaces with colors that alternate between glossy, acidic hues and delicate, feathery whispers of pastel tones. Some compositions continue Smith’s seemingly impenetrable optical fields, while other paintings give way to gentle open spaces as soothing respites from the relentless buzz. He distills the essence of personal visual experiences along with unreliable, fading memories of game show sets, a Grand Canyon postcard, the motion picture Tron, misinterpreted street signs, Rubik’s Cube, psychedelic posters, 80’s video games, recurring ocular migraines, nude pantyhose and a sculpture by studio mate and fellow Western Exhibitions artist Ben Stone.
The show will open on Saturday, October 24, with a free public reception from 5 to 8pm, and runs through December 5. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm.
This is Geoffrey Todd Smith’s fourth solo show with Western Exhibitions. Smith’s solo shows include Luis de Jesus Los Angeles; Hyde Park Art Center and the Union League, both in Chicago, and Nudashank in Baltimore. His work has been included in group shows at The DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, The Hughes Gallery in Australia, The Green Gallery in Milwaukee, Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles, DCKT in NYC and Baer Ridgway in San Francisco. His work is in the collections of Hallmark Inc. in Kansas City, the Jager Collection in Amsterdam, the South Bend Art Museum in Indiana and Harper College in Illinois. Geoffrey Todd Smith lives and works in Chicago and has been written about in art ltd, the Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Magazine, who called him one of the “rising stars we should be collecting now”. On Bad at Sports in 2015, artist and critic Kevin B. Blake writes :
Geoffrey Todd Smith is a prime example of an artist who uses his practice to induce introspection, which manifests materially as abstract paintings. His titles often reflect his accumulation of shared experience and an insight into the immediacy of his process, while the images conjure a methodology for achieving the internal gaze. His most recent project was executed under a set of rigid parameters that maintained a control of scale, considered material applications, and required an immense dedication of time.