Paul Anthony Smith

© Paul Anthony Smith. Kindly donated by the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

About this work:

This work is from Paul’s Dreams series, which is closely related to his Dreams Deferred series. These works depict varied urban gardens in New York City that are contained, and somewhat concealed, behind chain link fences. To Smith, these works are a metaphor for the elusive American dream— seductive flowers ready to be picked, yet accessible only to a certain set of people who are granted entry. The gestural and painterly surfaces of these works suggest that although structures in place attempt to regiment access to these endemic spaces, the dream has potential to take on a life of its own and revel against these systems; the heavy impasto of oil stick giving the illusion that these lush gardens are pushing against and challenging their barriers.

Paul Anthony Smith (b. Jamaica, 1988; lives and works in New York, NY) creates paintings and picotage on pigment prints that explore the artist’s autobiography, as well as issues of identity within the African diaspora. 

Referencing both W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness and Franz Fanon’s theory of diasporic cultural confusions caused by colonialism, Smith alludes to fences, borders, and barriers to conceal and alter his subjects and landscapes.Smith’s practice celebrates the rich and complex histories of the post-colonial Caribbean and its people. Memory, migration and home are central to Smith’s work, which probes questions of hybrid identities between worlds old and new. Smith’s layered picotage is often patterned in the style of Caribbean breeze block fences and modernist architectural elements that function as veils, meant both to obscure and to protect Smith’s subjects from external gaze. While photography typically functions as a way in which to reveal and share information, Smith’s picotage has a concealing and purposefully perplexing effect. Forcing these nuanced diasporic histories into a singular picture plane, Smith encourages layers of unease within these outwardly jovial portraits. Picotage serves as an access point as Smith interrogates which elements of identity are allowed to pass through the complexities of borders and migration.