KRISTA LOUISE SMITH

EVERYTHING THAT HOLDS

OPENING FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 6 - 9PM

ON VIEW UNTIL OCTOBER 21, 2023

We so often equate states of being, feelings, or perceptions to narrowed epitomes that discard complexity. Strength and power, beauty and flawlessness, assertion and aura, can become interchangeable regardless of the subtleties that differentiate them. Yet some of the most acute experiences of one’s life may occur in liminal territories – the contours of which may remain somewhat undefined and porous. There is incredible grace to be found in these blurred spaces and interstices. In their passing or unspoken nature, we may encounter the unbeknown.

Smith’s entire practice takes shape from the mere matter of the ungraspable. Fleeting, her paintings captivate by their understated, undeniable radiance, and magnetic presence, which contrasts unequivocally with their apparent minimal nature. These semi-abstract scenes, evoking ephemeral ever-changing skies, play with the limits of perception. Where does white end and color start? When does an all-encompassing shade morph into a defined hue, still so subtle it can barely be captured by the eye? How untamable can a tone be when made to act as transitional, evolving depending on time, light, or context? In Everything that Holds, Smith’s paintings become contained but also open-ended portals into oneself. One will get lost in these almost-but-not-quite monochromatic protean landscapes where their mind may wander unencumbered. 

Inspired by the archways she encountered in Italian courtyards and gardens, Smith’s pieces are access points into our own subconscious memories – these states of belonging we know so well and yet cannot quite name or fully understand. Each panel, set in a custom tonal frame – reminiscent of historical architectural structures – radiates a light-colored glow that defines its inner space, while further blurring the line between the painting, its edge, and the wall. The eye wanders, focusing in and out in an attempt to better ‘read’ both content and colorway. The journey becomes inherently part of the personal connection one builds with these works. This intimacy mirrors how much of herself the artist pours into her practice, to materialize a set of unique, specific sensations that may touch our universal human experience. With Petal (2023), one of five arched paintings, Smith leans into the tradition of the self-portrait, expressing the intense state of overwhelming fragility she at times finds herself grappling with. Titled after her partner’s nickname for her when facing such vulnerable states, this specificity does not encumber the viewer’s ability to find a piece of their own story in its halo of greens.

Smith’s works are inner quests for connection to her familial roots, which manifest for her as impressions and emotions, rather than didactic analytical recollections or souvenirs. In Basil, Bones, Belonging (2023), she explores her matriarchal Italian lineage and its vibrant impact on her being. A ceramic rib cage and pelvis, with a single arm and delicate hand, on a bed of fresh living basil, the smell of which overpowers the gallery, evoke unprocessed ancestral remembrance and trauma and how these may materialize in the body or catharize in the present. Never limiting or contriving her practice to monolithic readings, Smith’s sculptural works explore the complexities of what lingers in both the palpable and the ethereal. Her ceramics act as embodiments of these multi-generational, immaterial inheritances, woven into the very corporal substance of our beings.

Feelings are not always processed in the most didactic of ways. Yet, at times, a primal impulse will serve as a direct trigger for new forms. In Wildflower (2023), the notion of femininity fighting back, of women as hunters – and no longer perceived as preys – prevails in a series of unique, toothed, round ceramic vessels, hinting to Smith’s core awareness of women’s resilience, strength, and courage, but also intensely entrenched, often repressed anger and rage. The almost forty pieces displayed together resemble an odd garden of carnivorous plants, feeding from an allure misunderstood as invitation. Their apparent unprovoked visceral reactions only outline further how profound, layered, but invisible, societal biases can be.

By nurturing the almost, the barely, the in-between, the intangible, the fragile, Smith refuses to contrive her practice – and herself – to narrowed, predetermined definitions. Her work is one of expanse, of subtle play between our perceptions of an object’s edge or felt containment, and what escapes our visual and emotional control. When so much of our experience is based in the immediacy of impulse-triggered self-gratification, Everything that Holds offers a shifted perspective, one based on the impact of what remains and may move you beyond the limits of your own cognizance. 

Essay by writer and curator Anne-Laure Lemaître

Krista Louise Smith (b.1986, Ontario, Canada) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Recent exhibitions include those with CARVALHO PARK, New York (2023, 2022, 2020); Nicodim Gallery, New York and Bucharest (2023, 2022); Swivel Gallery, New York (2023); Deanna Evans Projects, New York (2021); Half Gallery, New York (2021); Andrea Festa Fine Art, Rome (2021); curated by Domenico de Chirico; and the Southampton Art Center, New York (2020), curated by Stephanie Roach. Her work has also been presented with CARVALHO PARK at the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), New York, art fair (2023) and Kiaf SEOUL (2022, and with Swivel Gallery in 2023). Smith received her BFA from OCAD University (formerly the Ontario College of Art and Design) in Toronto in 2010, and in 2014 an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art, where she was a NYAA Merit Scholarship recipient. She has been awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) grant, the Ruth Katzman Prize, and is a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation for the Arts Grant. In August 2023, her practice was highlighted in Artnet New’s Up Next, by arts writer Katie White.