Last Thursday saw the much-anticipated opening of Nick Smith's newest 'P' exhibition 'POSED', Voice of the Muse.
Thank you to everyone that attended the private view of the show, it was a fantastic evening for collectors and new receivers of Nick Smith's work alike, to meet the artist and take in this dynamic collection of original colour-chip works.
The show will be exhibiting until the end of December (22.12.22) so there is still plenty of time to come and see the works for yourselves!
ABOUT POSED
Focusing on nudes rooted in the Western Art Historical Canon, Smith seeks to give a voice to those famous and recognisable muses we often recall visually so well yet know little to nothing about. What stories could lie behind the figures in the images? Smith has laced this new series of works with original prose voiced from the point of view of the muse, for the first time ever giving the subject of the painting their own voice and creating a fictional narrative behind the works.
Smith’s distinctive style not only encourages us to imagine beyond the image, but also experiments with how far an image can be changed while still being recognisable.
Breaking the image down into coloured pixels, Smith picks out those details we don’t even realise we know so well; the deep blue of a Hockney Californian pool, or the orange hue so familiar of a Botticelli goddesses’ hair. The technique has an ability to change the overall sense of the image, from a detailed nude to a dreamy, abstracted collection of beautiful colours.
This is best exampled in his ‘Wish You Were Here’ series featured in the show. In this series, Smith takes contemporary nudes; tongue-in-cheek references to 'Page Three' and what ‘nude’ has become in modern times, referenced by modern media. The works are completely pixelated, broken down the bare bones of what the original photograph depicts and yet they are still instantly recognisable. The pixelated effect almost makes the works appear distorted for ‘age restricted content’.
So far, the exhibition has been a roaring success. For your further information, our sister site over at Rhodes Editions will be soon releasing a limited-edition print which will be available very soon! Please sign up to the editions mailing list for further information.
For all sales enquiries relating to the exhibition, please contact info@rhodescontemporaryart.com or call +44 (0)20 7240 7909.
November 30, 2022
