Paul Anthony Smith

Paul Anthony Smith, an artist originally from Jamaica and now based in New York, creates photo-based works that challenge the colonial and predatory history and nature of photography. Rather than capturing subjects for mere visual enjoyment, archive, or collection, Smith uses his previous training in ceramics to modify and disturb the pictorial surface of his images. He employs a series of sculptural picks in a ritualistic process he calls "picotage" to simultaneously dismantle the image and deepen its meaning.

Smith's diary-like photos of people, places, and events he has encountered during his travels through the Caribbean and UK serve as the basis for his work. He mixes vibrant scenes of carnivals, sober images of funerals, and casual views of friends and family gatherings. As he rakes these photos with hundreds of picked edges, creating quasi-lenticular constellations that appear as both architectural patterns and ethereal veils, Smith evokes armor and embellishment simultaneously.

Recent works by the artist involve painting the dark contours of chain-link fences upon photos of tropical vistas, as well as verdant gardens upon bordered urban lots. These works raise questions of access and inclusion for those who live and consume territory in different ways. Throughout the exhibition, there is a common thread of Smith's location and dispersal of his biography across a decade of work. He finds shards of himself and his diasporic identity amidst the oscillating collage of lives revealed and obscured in his photographs.