PATRICIA SMITH
Seeing in Code
September 5th- October 5th
Reception Sat. September 5th, 4-6
Forgetting distance for a moment...
Looking down through the stars (as if that were possible)
And getting an eyeful of synchronicities.
Patricia Smith
Front Room Gallery is pleased to present, “Seeing in Code” a solo exhibition of drawings by Patricia Smith
Front Room Gallery is pleased to present Patricia Smith: Seeing in Code, a solo exhibition of drawings and video that investigates the symbolic language of mapping, both real and imagined. In her latest body of work, Smith charts towns and villages in the Hudson Valley with an eye toward what is more than what is seen, geographically, emotionally, and psychologically. The works operate as psychic maps, intertwining built environments, celestial patterns, and natural features such as rivers and floodplains. Water recurs throughout the exhibition as a potent metaphor for the unconscious, being fluid, elusive, and always in motion, suggesting the ways in which memory, intuition, and inner states are encoded within our perception of place.
Patricia Smith's new series of drawings, “Constellations,” is an examination of landscape and the relationship of its human-made features with natural formations in the form of bodies of water and celestial bodies.
Each drawing in “Constellations” depicts a town or village in the Hudson Valley. Smith maps the areas as seen from above, rendering details of the landscape with a delicate application of ink, colored pencil and watercolor. Superimposed on the map is a constellation, plotted in white ink, that stands out in stark contrast from the muted colors of the landscape and the dark blue of the paper. The resulting image is a rendering of an imagined pattern of cosmic connections.
A survey exhibition including both new and older work not previously exhibited in the US. The works, include large and small scale drawings and a video, is a portrayal of natural forces, especially that of water, an often-used metaphor for the unconscious.
Included in the exhibition, is an earlier series of works is configured under the title, Flood Maps, which was created in Rotterdam, the Netherlands—a place where the control of flooding has been developed over centuries. Two large-scale drawings and two very small-scale drawings explore the mapping of the "flood idea". A video shows Smith's sculpture of sewn-together dish towels, sponges and other absorptive materials, based on the form in one of the drawings, being defeated by the waves on the shore of Hoek van Holland.