Lisa Kehler Art + Projects is pleased to present Suzie Smith | one thing, then another – the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Smith will present a new body of work that plays with deconstructed systems and process through print, sculpture and animation.
Working with a specific set of shapes, objects, and colours, the artist considers diverse possibilities through arrangement and rearrangement. Small adjustments, varied angles, and colour shifts work together to create playful new structures, often echoing slightly familiar objects.
Through setting rules for how shapes and images interact and then showing the variations together, the works become diagrams of an idea. This interest in systems and process connects directly with Smith’s interest in printmaking. In particular, the kind of push and pull between tradition and a rebelliousness to want to push against its boundaries.
Smith explains: I have created a system or structure to play within. Usually you think of a system as rigid or restrictive but in this case it frees something up, forcing me to be improvisational. The nature of the system allows room for play. The drying time of ink makes me do it quickly. I can’t question what I am doing. I have to act.
I am interested in the idea of thinking through making and I think it is evident in some of the crayon prints- adding more rules as I go such as limited colours, limited number of lines, lines in a certain direction etc. In this case they are minimal but that isn’t to say in a different series they wouldn’t be scribbled in different ways, but there would still be a system for the messiness.
one thing, then another will introduce over 30 new works as well as a new animation. The exhibition will open to the public on November 25 and run until December 24. An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 25 from 6-9 pm, with the artist in attendance. An interview with Craig Love will be available online in advance.
