Ray Smith is a Mexican-American painter who treats his relationship to both cultures in extremely curious ways.
Six of his nine paintings at the temporary home of the Arts Club of Chicago–formerly the B.C. Holland gallery, 222 W. Superior St.–are portraits of famous modern American writers.
Smith bases the paintings on well-known photographs, such as Richard Avedon’s portrait of Ezra Pound screaming, with eyes closed and chest bared.
In the first of three Pound pictures, Smith reproduces the Avedon image fully, only to enlarge and crop it in the others, which introduce various exaggerations of anatomy.
All the Pound portraits are in black on dark green, as if the subject were underwater. And here Smith really lets himself go, superimposing raucously colored sea creatures that float in front of the figure and only once appear to interact with him.
This strategy of superimposition carries through the entire show, apparently having some symbolic value that allows Smith to indulge a kind of “magic realism” familiar from the works of other Latin-American artists and writers.
He does not, then, create a literal underwater world; there’s no distorting play of lights and shadows. It’s more like Smith’s figures are behind a transparent scrim that has sea creatures attached.
His “underwater” world becomes a realm of fantasy that, in a sense, strips the figures of all distinguishing characteristics except the one they share–which is being underwater.
And this probably has something to do not only with Smith’s multicultural viewpoints but also his status as a postmodern artist who works out of a set of values different from the heroic, questing ones of the writers he depicts.
The fact that all his paintings on exhibit have superimpositions also disguises the possible motive in regard to the writers. A striding elephant in “Fake Tide” has sea creatures floating around it, as well. So fantasy is, at times, just fantasy, used by Smith without an intent to level the playing field.
In any event, this is peculiar work the artist is not always able to make a success. His painting of the figures in “T.S. Eliot II” and “Truman Capote III” is awkward while the conception of “Jacques Cousteau III” has the character of an elaborately patterned exercise.
Smith is much stronger in “Marianne Moore II,” which superimposes fighting squid over a frontal view, in closeup, of the young author’s compelling face.
(Through July 14.)
