Fred Smith (b. 1987) is a human navigating their day to day existence through the act of making drawings, paintings, and sculptural objects. Their work is developed with a sense of subversive irony, exploring societal norms and situations that seem off or odd.
By bending physicality and destabilizing reality, Fred Smith’s uncanny creations prompt us to ask complex questions about our surroundings and our imagination. The artist has a similar mission in mind while creating the work, stating that he’s “simply asking questions that I don’t know how to ask with words.” Molding form and spaces into open-ended queries, Smith delivers us to a site where “the world is a stage.”
The improvisational quality imbued throughout his compositions nods at Surrealism—a movement developed in post-war Paris that explored the unconscious, hidden psychological tensions, and dream states. Creative abilities permeated Smith’s immediate family, and he has made drawings since his youth. His practice deepened the summer after eighth grade, he drew constantly from National Geographic and skateboard magazines after an ACL tear forced him to direct his active energy into visual expression. More recently, Smith’s sobriety—he stopped drinking and smoking marijuana in 2020—has strengthened his vigor to make paintings; he observes that “the difference is definitely in the work.” Smith swiftly and successfully cuts through what’s “known” and approaches the absurd as a place to survey the destabilization of certain structures and systems—an illuminated unreality. It is through this choose-your-own-adventure template that we can conceive of new worlds.