The Cerealart Project Room Presents Willie Wayne Smith "It is Like a Smile"
May 2 - July 3, 2008 , Opening Reception: Friday May 2nd, 6-9pm
Organized by Mickalene Thomas
"Willie Smith embodies the soul of an artist I hope to become one day.....he is the essence of creativity."
-Mickalene Thomas
If there was an event that could lead to the recent body of work by the young painter, Willie Smith, it could be like the excavation of ones blue jean pockets after days of wear. I imagine a torn magazine article, part classified ad, part comic, part headline; fonts of receipts, a lucky penny with worn edges from the pavement, maybe a brightly colored plastic wrapper mingling with a rubber band and a knotted piece of thread.
Willie Smith’s work is an amalgam of color, lightness and playful intensity, with lyrical, and sometimes lengthy titles. In the bottom corners of Model Proposal for a Monument to a Quiet War a new painting by the artist, two hands nearly graze the bottom of a small platform where an amorphous golden object sits atop a sea-green checkered floor. The erosion of the interior of the platform could be the remnants of a razed building, removed from the space where the sculpture now sits. Behind this floats a single loose-leaf sheet of notebook paper with a small tear that creates a delicate flap in the otherwise unmarked material. Above this, in the distance, flies a paper airplane that looks like it must have been folded with the utmost care. To the right of that, the broken remnants of a toy plane are standing, in pause, just before gravity takes them down. Closer to the viewer than the paper airplane’s flight, is a chain of lights strung on a shape similar to a paper chain that children make for celebrations. The hollow structure that borders the platform of the supposed monument holds two politely and unused erasers, however dwarfed by the size of the hands framing the painting.
I began a series of casual studio visits with Willie nearly two years ago, in the summer of 2006. At that point, Willie had already begun working for the artist, Mickalene Thomas. I remember his early skepticism over any long term plans for the Big Apple due to a lack of studio space. He was satisfying his desire to produce by creating miniature works on paper at a small table in his closet sized Greenpoint apartment. The remnants of his old work lined the narrow hallway, corners standing in for jacket hooks and cause for complaint from cramped housemates. My only real knowledge of Willie was from our days in Baltimore at Maryland Institute College of Art when I visited friends who he shared a warehouse space with. He was always working in the background.
Sometime after I joined the ranks of New Yorkers, I began a part time habit of Sunday evenings with Willie. He had a cold studio with new paintings at each visit. Slowly I got to know Willie and his background of growing up for half of his life in Haiti, which gave new understanding to his vocabulary of color and image. Over time, our conversations expanded, and the connection between Willie’s fascination with folk tales and the mythology of the “artist,” to his Grandfather’s work in Limbe, Haiti, as a self taught archaeologist of the world’s largest collection of Pre-Columbian artifacts. This led me to understand Willie’s process of experimentation and desire to use his knowledge as an artist to discover and expand his own mythology. Eventually my Sunday dinners with Willie became an entrance for me into his painting with him acting as a guide to the correlations between all of the variations of space in paintings and how he playfully weaves in and out of all them. Our conversations led to contemplating formulas for equations, never to be proven, and in turn opening up the possibility for the poetic. At times I would ask for specific explanations but many times I would simply enter the studio laughing at the colors or images that seemed to come from nowhere that I knew. Occasionally names of particular artists like Albert Oehlen, Georg Baselitz, and Martin Kippenburger would come up. For every visit, parts of his studio were cleared and prepared for a guest, to humbly showcase his new work.
Willie Wayne Smith was born in Limbe, Haiti in 1984. Limbe is a small mountain town in the north of Haiti outside of Cape-Haitian. Limbe played a crucial role in the slave revolt and corresponding development of voodoo society and religion. His family moved to the Lakeland, Florida in 1991. During the period of 1994-2002 he spent summers in Haiti. He graduated from The Maryland Institute College of Art in 2006. He now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
To view more works by Willie Wayne Smith visit cerealart.com. For more information please contact Shiya Mangel - shiya@cerealart.com.
CEREALART 149 North 3rd Street, Philadelphia PA 19106 T. 215.627.5060 E. info@cerealart.com
