Anatomy: Willie Wayne Smith | Library Street Collective
November 17, 2022 - January 17, 2023
Library Street Collective is excited to present Anatomy: Willie Wayne Smith, a digital exhibition of new work that presents an intimate look into the artist’s studio, practice, and inspiration. The presentation features eight new works by the Detroit-based artist that explore notions of the sublime experience and mirror our own aspirational—and deeply flawed—attempts at transcendence. The presentation features conversations with Smith and Curator Andrew Woolbright, as well as artist Matthew Day Jackson.
Working from stream-of-consciousness drawings to acrylic and airbrush, Willie Wayne Smith presents eight chimeric works that reinterpret personal and universal experience through a complex array of art languages that include abstraction, photo-realism, assemblage, and surrealism. Emanating from his atmospheric use of airbrush is a “state fair” aesthetic reminiscent of the visual culture in central Florida where the artist grew up exposed to customized cars, theme parks, and spray pigment t-shirts. Smith’s inclusion of ubiquitous objects—a concrete block, christmas tree, or beer glass—evoke both mundane and ceremonial use, set in landscapes that allude to sublime experience. The paintings call to mind the theological and art historical tradition of presenting the "lowly figure" in a moment of rapture, within a camp aesthetic. Placing a heightened focus on the inclusion of abstract signifiers, Smith aims to explore the possibilities of narrative and traditional value systems of painting through a cosmic lens.