After the success of his July exhibition, Pool Diaries, Nick Smith has returned to RHODES with new work featured in the 12:12 Summer Group Exhibition. He has created a series of four Rolex watches, rendered in his characteristic colour chip style. Exploring his fascination with material culture further, this is the first time Smith has experimented in depicting watches.
Whilst assuming the obvious of the watch as a timepiece or material symbol of wealth, Smith’s four watches in 12:12 reach further beyond this meaning, reflecting on the blessing of time as a source of opportunity. In this series of watches, Smith celebrates twenty-four blessings “measuring not the hours of the day but the quiet privileges those hours leave behind”. These watches represent how “the greatest luxury time affords us is not more time, but a life well noticed”. Each piece made up of twenty-four rows in total, Smith’s watches express a unique source of gratitude for every hour of the day.
Previously, Nick Smith has explored similar subjects such the craze of trainer culture, or the extreme price of art at auction, unpacking the human fixation on items which have been given significance. The series shows four watches: ‘Pink Perpetual’, ‘Coral Perpetual’, ‘Turquoise Perpetual’, and ‘Daytona’, all watches based on previous Rolex models. Once again, Smith finds these particular images which perfectly encapsulate the human fascination with material culture, and an inherent desire to be in possession of these special pieces.
Nick Smith found his iconic colour chip style, originally working as an interior designer, where Pantone colour chips were at hand constantly. Smith began experimenting with the way he could create images made up of the small swatches, giving each piece a pixelated style. Whilst his work began with recreating iconic pieces of art, as his practice grew Smith began creating his own images and chips, each with an individual caption which imbues the piece with a richer narrative.
