White Room: Greg Smith
June 17–July 23, 2005 320 West 13th StreetExhibition Description
White Columns is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of the New York-based artist Greg Smith. Smith’s videos consider (in his own words): “… strange characters who do their best to navigate the urban environment around them. An integral part of this endeavor is building objects that hover somewhere between working mechanisms and piles of junk that they use to interact with their surroundings and with each other.” Smith’s videos The Shoe and the Umbrella, 2004, and the recently completed Gargoyles, 2005 – which will debut at White Columns – riff on the legacies and traditions of surrealist cinema and situational comedy (Jacques Tati immediately comes to mind), whilst simultaneously exploring the claustrophobic nature of life in the metropolis.
Greg Smith lives and works in New York. Smith received a Ph.D in Physics from Harvard University in June 2000, before enrolling in the MFA program at Hunter College, from where he graduated in January 2005. Smith’s works have been shown recently at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York as a part of their “Premieres” screening series. This summer his work can also be seen in the group show Hunch and Flail curated by Amy Sillman at Artists Space, New York.