Emily Mae Smith “Novelty Court”
Junior Projects
This event has ended.
JUNIOR PROJECTS presents Novelty Court, an exhibition of new paintings by Emily Mae Smith.
In her latest work, Smith churns a semiotic pool swirling with late 19th century Art Nouveau illustration, New Wave graphic design, grocery produce, and even Disney animation. Working in watercolor, gouache, oil, and acrylic on linen, Smith handcrafts matte fresco-like surfaces that amplify the impact of her meticulously rendered 2D and 3D imagery. These pristine works refreshingly privilege representation and composition without the laissez-faire formalism
inherent in much of contemporary art being made today. Each painting references multiple heterogeneous sources—for example, the broom from Fantasia’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice leans against an Art Nouveau framework, an oversized banana inhabits the same visual space as an artist’s easel and perhaps even a canvas itself, letters that make up or reference Smith’s first name occupy a bright New Wave design, and cartoon facial features are purposely disconnected and organized into a modernist grid.
Smith reinvents still life painting for the 21st century with intellect, wit, and a healthy dose of Pop Cultural commentary. Taking a cue from Google’s non-hierarchal system of cataloguing the universe into sounds, texts, and image snippets, Smith’s work flirts with objects and their potential connotations. The incongruous elements in her paintings are not haphazard; rather, Smith willfully suggests new meanings, uncovering something novel in the world or within herself. Via illustrations she discovered in the Art Nouveau trade bulletin ”The Studio,” for example, Smith places graphic two-dimensional and realist three-dimensional renderings in the same visual arena. In “The Studio (Big Tomato)” Smith strips away aesthetic hierarchy and slyly comments on the inferior role accorded the female artist, presented here in the guise of the female studio model and juxtaposed with a highly sexualized rendering of a tomato. The
show borrows its title—Novelty Court—from the name of an Art Deco tenement building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that was once a theater. Many aesthetic languages similarly compete for attention and judgment on the stage of Smith’s canvases, reengaging us in new ways with known aesthetic styles, thoughts about art making, and objects.
Emily Mae Smith holds a MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Nationally her work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington D.C., Nashville, and Austin. International exhibitions include the 2010 Portuguese Biennial and the SOMA Museum of Art in Seoul. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times and Art Papers Magazine.
[Image: Emily Mae Smith, The Studio (Big Tomato), 2014]
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Schedule
from June 08, 2014 to July 13, 2014
Opening Reception on 2014-06-08 from 18:00 to 20:00