Artist: Leslie Smith III
Dates: September 15th to October 21st, 2016

LESLIE SMITH III “Time Further Out”
September 15th to October 21st, 2016

Inspired by the late Dave Brubeck 1961 album, “Time Further Out”, Smith’s recent paintings explore notions of time in ways that alter shape and form. Smith delves into the uncertainty of modular forms as the basis of his paintings construction. He joins shapes together with lyrical motives that allude to the interpersonal and gestural narratives at the helm of his creative practice. “Time Further Out” investigates the prospects of sequencing content over more than one canvas, where themes are developed in stages. In doing so, time synchronizes with space both literally and perceptually. The challenge presented with Smith’s “Time Further Out” is one’s ability to succumb to a fractured sense of pictorial space in order to process the subject within the personal confines of the mind.

Smith is informed by minimalist ideologies, particularly, Post Painterly Abstraction and New Geometric Conceptualism. Dimensional expansion of perceived two-dimensional space is at the core of Smith’s project. He questions principles of multi-dimensional geometries, creating unconventional viewing experiences, in which alternative pictorial spaces operate allegorically. In lieu of early 20th century fourth dimensional antidotes, “Time Further Out” reconsiders multiple dimensionalities contrary to cubism; where triangle facets represent an array of planes and angles seen from different points of view dismantling the matrix of realism. Leslie Smith III restructures the matrix of abstraction on a scale that encompasses painting as both object and image.

Leslie Smith III was born 1985 in Maryland and grew up in metropolitan Washington, DC, graduated with a BFA degree in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2007, and obtained an MFA degree in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2009. Since then his work has been included in many exhibitions in the US, such as his first solo Museum exhibition “I Dream Too Much” at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Madison, Wisconsin in 2013; the Valérie Cassel
Oliver curated exhibition “Black in the Abstract, Part 2: Soft Curves/Hard Edges” at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in Houston, Texas, in 2014; and his solo exhibition “As I Remembered” at Beta Pictoris gallery in Birmingham, Alabama and “Living in the flat land” in PONCE+ROBLES gallery, Madrid, in 2015. His work is found in numerous private collections in the US, and he is the recipient of many Honors and Awards, such as the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts Scholarship in 2003, and the 2009 Al Held Affiliate Fellowship for the American Academy in Rome. “Time Further Out” is his second solo exhibition in Spain.