Making Strange (2016)
Curating Tom Smith
Spring/Break Art Show, US Postal Building
A curatorial project for contemporary artists, Tom Smith, featured at the US Postal Service Building during the Spring/Break Art Show.
Making Strange employed set design tricks such as false perspectives and black lighting to create the spacialization of flat representation of space – in this case a 1 point perspective of a room. When immersed in the installation this had an uncanny effect akin to the Russian Formalist notion of making strange.
Each of Smith's painting consist of two acrylic paintings on paper - one a dreamlike copy and interpretation of the other. These paintings are sliced into tiny strips (1/8th of an inch wide) that are alternatively pasted on wood panel. When the paintings are combined in this way what emerges appears like a freeze-frame of two video images in dramatic transition. Within the seemingly kinetic scenes amorphous faces emerge, exaggerated eyes and lashes leer, floor tiles float over liquid forms as walls disappear.
W/ Tom Smith