Shows
Ray Smith
Ray Smith: RAYS MITH
17 January – 23 February 2008
Opening Reception: January 17, 2008 6pm - 8pm
Roebling Hall in conjunction with Nicholas Robinson Gallery are pleased to present Ray Smith in RAYS MITH, his first New York solo exhibition in five years and the first exhibition following the publication of his monograph and recent Retrospective Exhibitions in Europe and Texas.
For this occasion Smith has returned to the intimate realm of his naturalist Tex-Mex mythology; recounting personal mythologies which are arguably the pillars of his existence: women, family, desire, politics, the carnivalesque culture of rodeo, eroticism, mockery and the worship of nature’s magic and mystery.
These new paintings and drawings continue the path explored by his solo shows at Akira Ikeda Gallery (Berlín) and Joan Prats (Barcelona), in which an onerous aesthetic and the interplay of a decisive stroke signal the unreality of the tale. The landscape converses with what is private and attached to the subject’s experience; where dream, nightmare, or the phantasmal realm of memory converse with reality. This is a body of work in which innumerable drawings take an enlivened look at amusement, coquetry and laughter while the inherent grandiloquence and majesty of the work comment on its internal splendor, the knowledge of its gesture, and its own pleasure, ultimately rendering Smith a master of his mark.
Several paintings from this exhibition will also be on display at Nicholas Robinson Gallery.