Inside of Anj Smith’s ‘Drifting Habitations’ Exhibition at Hauser & Wirth – WWD

“If I had to sum up what these paintings are, I’d say it’s about painting and about looking, and how we look,” says Anj Smith of her “Drifting Habitations,” her exhibition of brandnew paintings on view at Hauser & Wirth in Pristine York. “And why it’s important to look carefully. If we lose our capacity to really look carefully and think deeply, then we’re more at the mercy of post-truth and being able to be manipulated.”

Smith’s art work ask over audience into the composition, the use of colour as a number one seduction device to inspire taking a look nearer to discover main points and which means. In her biggest paintings, “If Winter Comes (Can Spring Be Far Behind?),” a diptych rooted in an inky aubergine backdrop, the collapse outlines of figures emerge underneath an cold frame of aqua — a fin, a flash of a tail, tentacles — their stillness juxtaposed with the motion of creatures inside mossy strands suspended within the portray’s sky. The impact cries to thoughts a Rorschach check, one wherein what the viewer sees within the paintings, and in what layout, has the power to steer their belief. Smith notes that creditors ceaselessly electronic mail her about finding brandnew facets inside her art work years upcoming their acquisition.

“On Instagram and on social media we’re used to looking at imagery really quickly and in quite a shallow way, and so I’ve deliberately positioned my practice counterintuitively against that,” says the British painter, on the town for the exhibition’s opening. “So that these things unfold really slowly.”

Describing her art work as conceptual, Smith notes that her manner is basically invested within the viewer’s interpretation of the perceptible. Two philosophical questions guided the launch of her fresh order: “What is there? And then, if there is anything, what is the nature of that thing? How do we perceive our realities?” she says. 

The exhibition comprises art work of numerous scales — the intimacy with each and every created through the viewer’s willingness to have interaction — and depicts aqua, a brandnew perceptible part in her paintings, in its numerous states.

“Water is very amorphous by its very nature, it doesn’t have set contours, and it’s very changeable,” she says. “So it has all of this potential for being many different things. That really fascinates me. But at the same time, it’s a singular element. It’s water. It’s always water,” she provides. “The sense of self that I’m trying to encapsulate in my painting is something that is one thing; it’s one human life, but at the same time it’s really impossible to pin down a concrete, coherent, singular identity in any of these figures. And that’s the whole point — that it’s impossible to do so. And yet we live in this moment where there’s such a drive towards trying to encapsulate and label, and especially force on women a particular way of existing in some fantasy perfect state.” 

Lots of the art work depict a nude feminine determine, peering out from the canvas from in the back of glasses and mesh panels. The primary paintings Smith created for the order, which hangs within the gallery’s front, is “Double Flower of the Marsh Barrier.” She mulls the speculation of an oscillating sense of self, conveyed via “pairs” of gadgets throughout the paintings, in addition to the problem of representing the feminine frame.

“Painting the female nude was a very big deal, because it’s so loaded. And I have not felt comfortable addressing and taking on such a problematic subject and genre in painting until now,” says Smith. “You’re dealing with the gaze, and then you’re dealing with the refutation of the gaze,” she provides. “But that in itself became quite problematic. And so I felt as though what I could offer this conversation was presenting the conundrum of the female gaze. Not presenting any neat conclusion. What I think can be powerful about some of these poses is that they’re just existing. And sometimes that can be the most powerful act of resistance.”

That stillness is juxtaposed through the consistent chance of alternate, anxiousness that seeps via in a way of ecological alternate found in each and every of her painted scenes. Like aqua, and just like the id of her feminine figures, the climate of the geographic international is in consistent movement. 

The display’s name, “Drifting Habitations,” references French semanticist Roland Barthes’ definition of atopia — that which is hard to pin i’m sick.

“It’s just so impossible to encapsulate in language, whether it’s written or whether it’s painted, our experiences. We’re never going to be fully able to share an experience with anyone,” says Smith. “But as I’ve encountered more of life, I feel as though the attempt to communicate is very precious and valuable, and the only thing we have as humans,” she provides. “And the attempt to connect is something that should be treasured.”