John Holt Smith

Start date: Saturday, March 28, 2009
Event is ongoing: Until Saturday, May 2, 2009

John Holt Smith's paintings are studies in ultimate abstraction, reducing figurative images to their most elemental state. He begins by pinpointing and enlarging one cross-section of a photograph. A photo-editing program allows him to manipulate and stretch the selection into uniform striations, exposing its unique color signature. He then mirrors that color sequence with paint, painstakingly applying thousands of layers and lines onto an iridescent aluminum panel.

For this exhibition, Smith departed from his usual broad landscapes and chose more focused imagery to inform the finished pieces. The linear Sequence pieces began with photographs of brightly colored poppies-an appropriate choice for creating seductive and alluring color signatures. The show includes new sub-series as well, which Smith refers to as the Oculus paintings. These stem from photographs of human eyes and take the abstract sequencing process even further: the artist has folded the vertical striations into concentric circles. While the end product resembles an eye in shape, the artist has removed all recognizable identifiers. It is "at once familiar and yet unknown."