Leslie Smith III - Maus Contemporary

Leslie Smith III is a Madison, Wisconsin-based artist. Smith’s interests lie in our conscious effort to alter personal perception. Recent works explore Abstraction’s inherent personal and political properties as they relate to broadening notions of Black representation and expression. Leslie Smith III earned a BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA at the Yale School of Art. Smith exhibits nationally and internationally. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond; the Birmingham Museum of Art; the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Birmingham, AL; and the FRAC Auvergne, France. Smith is currently a Full Professor of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a recent 2022 Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellow.

 I am an artist who creates paintings and works on paper that explore the relationship between abstraction and identity. My art investigates themes such as compatibility, transparency, resentment, and opaqueness, which I see as influences on our interactions with people in our daily lives. Reflecting our complex and multifaceted identities, my paintings are composed of multiple parts, with individual-shaped canvases functioning as excerpts that represent parts of something greater. I am curious about the space beyond the surface of the canvas and seek to invite the viewer to delve deeper into the layers of my work.

My creative process reflects my interest in painting gestures and their allegorical potential in broadening notions of Black expression. Isolated gestures are assembled into rigid structures, reflecting the challenges of deriving meaning from form and color while also taking shape as objects imbued with emotive sensibilities. These works acknowledge the complexities of Black identity as they relate to personal experience.

I paint to archive processes in search of challenging yet familiar aesthetics. Like a collage artist, I reimagine the representation of multiple dimensionalities and the pictorial possibilities of two-dimensional surfaces. The resulting image is a shaped object on a wall that conveys meaning in its physical presence, sparking curiosity and anxiety in those encountering it.

With an interest in confronting art history and its accompanying dogmas, I freely assimilate canonical conversations and create works that collapse the medium's traditional divisions. By doing so, I suggest that contemporary abstract painting can critically engage its rich history while transcending ideological limitations.

- Leslie Smith III

The artist recent exhibition Stranger days explores the intimacy of observation. Once again, I’ve turned to the painting support itself for inspiration. Accepting the initial shaped canvas as the first formative gesture, I’ve looked to create subsequent gestures that amplify its presence. The addition of felt, as a juxtaposing support, allows a nuanced conversation between the rigidity of weave and weft and the irregularity and randomness of felted wool fibers. This conversation is steeped in notions of drawing, mark making and improvisational discovery. Therefore, paving the way for a more process-based approach to integrating illusionistic space and an embrace of perceived flatness. Stranger Days looks to challenge how we see what we see. This exhibition warrants long stares and quiet, intimate viewing. This was the space from which this work was conceived, in the latter half of 2020. Inherently introspective, this selection of paintings pause to acknowledge the fortification of daily rituals during times of intense uncertainty. I focused on allowing space for redefining the rules of making while concurrently experiencing deep shifts in our social-cultural and political identities. The individual works in this exhibition reference both internal and external forces. The likes of which we experience when trying to rationalize disbelief.

— Leslie Smith III

"Amongst the chaos of mid 2020, the pandemic, political riots, working from home, home school, grocery shopping, long lines, and PCR tests. I longed for silence while in lockdown.

In Silence is a series of drawings whose making, calmed many storms and created the grounding force to stay focused and disciplined. It is a selection of five drawings from a ritualized drawing practice. Each drawing consists of many light and scratchy marks that collectively create nebulous forms. I intended to create works that made graphite appear weightless on paper. My uncertainty of a definitive outcome for each drawing initiated the start of a new one. The idea of finishing anything seemed too certain in a time of so much uncertainty.

At the core of these five selected works, I found silence."

— Leslie Smith III, January 2022

An abstract painter, Smith explores both the complexity of the non-representational and the expansiveness created by working on non-traditional supports. Not content with being confined by the linearity of the rectangle or the square, Smith explodes the confines of geometry with custom designed shaped canvas supports that would seem accidental were they not so absolutely intentional, their soft edges falling away, drifting, challenging viewers’ expectations and creating tensions that are almost unimaginable.

Smith’s paintings literally feel as if they could leap off the wall. Their forms seem as if they could reflect, veil and reveal at precisely the same moment as the artist pushes viewers away, holds them close and pulls them through in the same moment. Smith understands the complexities of abstraction and he uses both the surfaces and the structures of his works to create tensions that are palpable. His works are filled with suggestions of the familiar, being both wondrous and comforting.