Artist Talk with David B. Smith

Smith makes fabric-based photo-sculpture, installation, and sound performance to explore fantasy, loss, commodity, and connection in American culture. To gain access to the back-end of cultural memory, he playfully rearranges iconography using pseudo programming code - comprised of digital and analog fragmentation, accreditation, and reorientation. He isolates patterns, crosses wires, and entertains poetic interpretations, making the once familiar strange and unsettling, yet oddly cozy.

David Benjamin Smith (b. Washington, DC) is a multidisciplinary artist and third generation immigrant of Ashkenazic descent who lives in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY) and holds an MFA from Bard College. He was awarded a 2020 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Craft/Sculpture, and residencies with Apex Art, New Zealand; Franconia Sculpture Park, Minnesota; Marble House Project, Vermont; I-Park, Connecticut; Textile Arts Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, Millay Arts, Alfred University, and the BOFFO residency, in New York. Smith’s work has appeared in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, The International Center of Photography, Johannes Vogt Gallery, Museum Rijswijk, Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Asia Song Society, with solo shows at Geary Contemporary, Planthouse, Spring Break Art / Show, Halsey McKay Gallery in New York, and David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, CO (a different David B. Smith). Another World: The Textile Art of David B. Smith was on view in 2020-21 at Millersville University in Lancaster, PA, and SUNY Old Westbury in Long Island, NY. He designed a digital interactive version to accompany Another World, enabling him to engage the students during the pandemic. His work is in the collections of Peggy Cooper Cafritz, Beth Rudin DeWoody, and Yale University, and has been discussed in The Observer, VICE, Time Out, The Washington Post, and the New York Times.

https://www.thedavidsmith.com/