Paul Smith

PAINTING
10.07–10.31.1993

In Eclipse, “a triple grid of dots falls like bail across the picture plane, screening the depersonalized shape of a suburban bungalow in deep shadow (Poons meets Ruscha). Like a real estate ad gone wrong, it is windowless, grim and muted, as hermetically sealed as the plastic food-preserver that sits in the foreground like some smug, canny salesman looking for a chink in the household armour. Muted, too, are the twin circles of the audio speakers posted above: a surveying Cyclops-eye, a semi-eclipsed sun, an impotent alarm system. Tongue in cheek, Smith inserts a canine hand-shadow – part faithful watchdog, part Big Bad Wolf – to mock and personify the fear of the unkno)VD against which society barricades itself.”

From the essay by Susan Menzies, for the Shadow Band exhibition catalogue.