Dean

Smith

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Dean Smith's works emerge from a deep engagement with time and space, employing drawing, collage, and video to trace the delicate rhythms of the world around us. Not meant to be hurried through but rather to be experienced with quiet attention, they reveal layers of thought and feeling that are both meditative and precise. Through subtle shifts and understated complexity, Smith invites us to pause and consider what often lies just beneath the surface—an exploration of the unseen forces that shape our world.

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The environment collage series presents time both as rumination and physical fact. Constructed of fragments sourced from 19th century engraving illustrations (originally published in journals such as The Illustrated London News), these collages simultaneously mirror the time of the source material and obfuscate it. While the original images were representational (meant to illustrate news events or travelogues of the day), in my work the various collaged elements are arranged to abstract rather than reveal their figural nature. What becomes articulated is a deeply oneiric space.

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To play with time is to explore the condition of reverie, and as Gaston Bachelard states, “Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.” The collages thus become mysteries to be savored, not problems to be solved.

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For a number of years before his death, I was an assistant to Bruce Conner. About a year before he died, Bruce wanted to create a new series of his iconic collages. Being of declining health, Bruce no longer had motor control in his hands to perform the delicate cutting and assembly needed to create such work. He asked that I help him, which largely meant that I was free do what I wanted; light supervision, of course! Not previously working in collage, I found I had an affinity for the material and mindset. Upon Bruce’s death, his wife Jean, in an amazing act of generosity, gifted me all of his source material. The rest, as they say, is history.

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Dean Smith creates drawings, collages, and videos. His work reflects upon the measure of time, the peculiarities of space, and the ceaseless human impulse to render the invisible visible by inviting us to join him in a slow, rich meditation on an idea as it unfolds to its conclusion.

A recipient of a California Arts Council Fellowship Award, Smith's work is placed in prominent public collections, including The British Museum; Hammer Museum; LACMA; Buffalo AKG Art Museum; The Art Institute of Chicago; Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

He is represented by Anglim/Trimble, San Francisco, and Eli Ridgway Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal, and has had solo presentations at Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica; Marvelli Gallery, New York; and Gallery Joe, Philadelphia in addition to numerous group exhibitions in galleries nationally and internationally.

Smith lives and works in Oakland, California.

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