Original artwork

Edition 1 of 1

Paint on repurposed London bus panel

38 x 40cm

North Carolina based painter and sculptor Fred Smith (b. 1987) makes art as a dissection of the societal phenomena and personal experiences that delivered him to this very point in time, producing art and caring for his child. Fred’s military family moved from California to Germany at the age of 5, shaping his world view with the early perspective of an outsider. Whether it be due to discomfort or poetic vision, Smith states that making art became the best way of questioning his experience and straightening his thoughts. With world-building at the heart of the artist’s process, he creates a parallel reality to his own in which his anxieties can be simulated. In this universe, each painting deepens the narrative of a man’s internal state of flux as if he were a clerk designated to file away the chaos of the past. Beside his two dimensional work lies sculpture. Taken through the filter of Smith’s inner workings, each piece is the result of an obsession on a significant object twisted by its relation to his sense of self. Both his paintings and sculpture are absurdly speculative, endearing, and worthy of many moments of inward reflection.