Hello there!
The following is something I wrote in response to an exhibition of artist Greg Smith at Susan Inglett Gallery in New York that closed about a month ago… I guess not as far back as I thought.
I’m self-conscious about this lingering in drafts instead of me actually publishing it, but I can’t help but be committed to my belief in the power of the art, so I’m back.
Smith’s showcased art drew inspiration from an individual who is connected to the sovereign citizen movement. No longer living, that man — David Wynn Miller — created a system of ostensible grammar useful for a mindset in which the individual can be or become somehow substantively and legally free from the substance and laws of the jurisdictions in which they live.
I was a bit worried about the possibility of essentially elevating the profile of a line of thinking that I feel is genuinely destructive, though I was eventually convinced by way of thinking of Smith’s art more matter-of-factly.
As for the actual substance of Smith’s captivating art, it was assemblage, and sculpture, and visual fireworks display all in unison. One very large piece combined angular selections of multiple fabrics with a chair suspended high above the spectator and, somewhere in there, a motor that would occasionally throw more freely moving pieces of the contraption literally right into the wall. It occurred to me in the gallery I’d never seen a sculpture hit itself against the wall before.
This device and the smaller-scale, also assemblage-oriented works in the exhibition alongside it were aggressively voracious in color and crowded form, though curiously, time and again, that aggression strikes me — at least now — as blunted. As the energy still by virtue of its nature had to go somewhere, that left a series of creations at war with themselves.
Fittingly, text was prominent in the art pieces, words becoming more a sensation of themselves than a series of fixed, specific meanings. There were also still more chair-skeletons hanging well above a level where they’d actually be useful.
In all of this, I found an illustration of craving and its gradual frustration. These artworks started out desperate for an audience and began to forget it was there. And to be clear, that’s to Smith’s credit. I’m just left to ponder the pitfalls of the mindset he artistically explored.
I also wrote another poem while contemplating these works. It’s admittedly a bit obtuse, but I tried to be very specific in the kind of state I was pointing towards.
Best wishes to the gallery and artist.
My Own Movement
by Valerie Bright, contemplating art by Greg Smith
Interneted vomit
Spliced genomic asparagus grocery store aisle Oreo cookie packages
wooden fence posts
overripe bananas!
Connected with a grommeter to a
Driving the elevator car with a lettuce stick shift and windowed tomatoes. hit
Mailbox cookie cutter Christmas tree angel topper
Tinsel garland salad dinner
Movie theater popcorn directing that we’re
Respecting the loss that was
The ice cream Bermuda triangle and purple square and dance floor and drugstore lip gloss that was
Embossed upon the surface with the wishes of a peopled linguini box and the cobblestones and the walled off messages and answers and light fixtures to solve all light fixtures. So beautiful.
A coffee maker for your car! And
Dishes, dirty but clean, looked after for a new build development that’s
On the way! Fully automated! hit
Offering the truth torn into the wall like an unwrapped present with a smile on your face torn from the desperate library searches for the pastor’s podium and the book and the
hit
Because watching, waiting, wondering, reading the Christmas light strands all the way to the hot dog stand to the
mashed walkway into which I lunge after dreams and dreams and and dreams and hymn morsels.
Potluck dinners and I’m alone and this isn’t real. It’s lights on the barbecue smoked wall of a Christmas play. hit
Skilled and that makes you wonder, what else is around? Who’s behind the frying pan window? Who’s under the
Table? There’s another restaurant under the
Table.
I don't know what a restaurant is.
Oh hey! Long time no
Clocks unearthed from the dirt still ticking.
An analog hit
clock inside the ancient desktop computer, its hands turning
Clocks found in the walls of a house under demolition, still ticking.
Clocks in the bread factory
clocks in the windows
clocks in the broken AC unit
clocks outside the gun range
clocks in the weeds on the archery field
clocks under the carpet
clocks in the China cabinet speaking another language behind the languid dinner table
And they all have
My
Face on them
Serious about the sir
dowsing with the trashed tent poles on the museum’s promenande
divining what the lord may expect of me
what I may expect the lord to expect of me in the face of, in the face of.
The government. The. Our father is of thee,
me.
The sound of a chair revealing its knowledge and know-how and a
Horn
hit
Blasting against the pavemented trees lining the
marking the tests with ink blotters about which I fantasize.
smoking roll down the historic fast food restaurant and train museum the hit
Boughs
Of sin and chicanery, and buffoonery, starting to see the devil around, the
Actually definitely telling us if we simply devote ourselves unto listening, learning, finding, fishing, cooking.
The way, the blinding light will be no more, the revelation will be real, those committing wrong
Will be undone, and undone, and undone, and the
And then I’m just looking in the mirror in my bathroom and I finish getting ready for work, or church, or class.
Just wanting to know the truths from the juice aisle in the discount grocery store by my hotel.
