Quality and originality are the key elements at Ebony, where Richard Smith will have his solo exhibition Rapid Eye Movement opening on Thursday 6th March. This opening adds to the First Thursdays buzz!
‘This is an exciting start to 2014 for us and follows on from our participation at the Cape Town Art Fair’, says Ebony’s curator Marc Stanes. ‘Smith’s multi panelled composites on paper utilise his love of the visually daring. There is a pent up energy at work here, a sensory overload, a marriage of the conscious and unconscious. Frantic individual figures are released into exquisitely beautiful and small individual oil panels, dripping with renaissance quality. There is a master at work here, a singularly unique voice.’
Resonating with the masters before him, Richard Smith quotes Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso …
‘Look at certain walls dirtied with stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones. If you have to invent some scene you will be able to see in them a resemblance to various landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills. You will also be able to see various battles and figures in quick movements, and strange expressions on faces and costumes and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate, well-conceived form’… (da Vinci McM no. 76 and cf. no. 93).
Says Smith; ‘When I first read this passage from Leonardo’s rules of painting, I was elated because I do this all the time.
I have entitled this exhibition ‘Rapid Eye Movement’ because as a viewer of these multi-panel works and oil on panel installations I want to see the work as a whole, as a conglomerate, but in the next instant I want to see many things. The small oils on panel are spawned from the larger composites on paper and in a sense freed from the ‘constraints’ of the multi-panel format.’
A highly established and recognised artist for over 40 years, Smith has been extensively exhibited in South Africa, UK, USA, Greece and Sweden.
WHAT: Richard Smith – Rapid Eye Movement
WHERE: Ebony, 67 Loop Street, Cape Town
WHEN: opening Thursday 6th March (5pm to 9pm) to Wednesday 2nd April 2014
CONTACT: For more information about the exhibition contact Gernot Achleitner at Ebony on 021 424 9985
021 424 9985 ; email gernot@ebonydesign.co.za or website
Cape Town’s central city comes alive on the first Thursday of every month, as dozens of art galleries and stores keep their doors open until 9pm. Whether you’re an art historian or someone who has never stepped foot in a gallery, First Thursdays is an incredible way to experience the cultural wealth that this city has to offer.
