PAUL ANTHONY SMITH
Trade Winds at Jack Shainman Gallery
Paul Anthony Smith explores his identity and Caribbean lineage through his distinctive picotage on pigment prints. His new Tradewinds series is on view at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York until Saturday, April 3.
Smith is known for producing works (which also include oil-on-canvas paintings) that explore his identity, Caribbean heritage, migration, and the African diaspora. He creates his signature picotage works by picking away at the surface of photographs, which alters the image, subjects, and texture, resulting in an alteration of the exact memory that he previously captured through his lens.
In this series, the artist’s signature picotage patterning appears more ambiguous and organic than most of his past creations but still includes clear traces of his fence, breeze block, and brick overlays. The process changes the depth of field and the viewer’s experience when looking at the image and elevates its subjects from their ordinary surroundings. He also uses it as a distancing technique, creating a structure (such as a window, gate, or mask) through which we view the subjects, which reminds us that we are only observing and are not participants in the scene itself. He typically photographs individuals or groups engaging in different types of informal activities. Apart from exploring his family history, he also considers the impact of this past year’s pandemic and racial protests and the question of why some lives are seen as more significant than others after they end. Death is an omnipresence celebrated in Caribbean traditions. As stated by the gallery, “Documented in a variety of purposefully ambiguous global locations, Tradewinds shines a lens on generations of people of Caribbean descent, considering how cartography, geography, and familial legacy determine our fate and our individual and collective impacts on the world.”
Smith was born in Jamaica in 1988 and now lives and works in New York. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. He has participated in countless exhibitions internationally. They include solo shows at the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE, and the Atlanta Contemporary, GA; a two-person show at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, PA; and group shows at Somerset House, London; the New Museum, NY; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, NC; the Seattle Art Museum, WA; the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, KS. His work is also part of collections, such as the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas, Austin
Tradewinds is currently on view at New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery for a few more days, closing on April 3. Smith’s work deserves to be viewed in person, so don’t miss your chance to see this inspiring and educational show.
