Also, a lot of my work is thinking about the carceral space more broadly, so not just prisons. There’s something about the rhythm, the imagery and the aesthetic that sonically exists in L.A., West Coast, gangsta rap - that aesthetic drives everything that I do.ĪNC: Sampling, remixing. I used to make music when I was in high school, and for a couple years out of high school. Specifically, rap music, and definitely a lot of West Coast rap music. Music is a big influence in my work, even if it isn’t obvious on the surface. Sable Elyse Smith: There’s a lot of indirect references to how L.A. How did this city shape you as an artist and thinker? In Smith’s hands, images of justice and safety warp into a carnival of faceless judges and rigged games.Īllison Noelle Conner: Most people associate you with New York, but you were born and raised in Los Angeles. Though the original pages exude a sincere trust in the court (“People Have to See The Judge When They Break the Law,” the text in one painting reads), Smith adds her own oblique commentary, using oil pastels to turn figures into clowns and wizards. Like a toss of the jacks into the air, incarceration feels like a game of violent chance, where the rules are driven by larger histories of racial capitalism.Įlsewhere, paintings like “Coloring Book 139” recast the pages of a children’s activity book - which Smith found years ago while taking a walk in her Harlem neighborhood - into cutting satiric scenes that emphasize the absurdity of incarceration. At Regen Projects, Smith reimagines the visiting-room stools of prisons as playground toys. Her work unpacks the psychic toll of navigating these environments daily. The artist, who has now lived in New York for more than a decade, was born and raised in Los Angeles, and her work draws from her firsthand experience interfacing with the prison system in Southern California, where her father was incarcerated for 19 years. artist Delfin Finley explores the gray areas of living, where joy and pain collide.Īcross her videos, sculptures, photographs, works on paper and texts, Smith returns to how society is shaped by carceral logic. Image ‘I wanted to give my family, my community something to see’ For her, prison isn’t a location but a state of being. Smith expands on this idea and positions the carceral system as a similar kind of atmosphere. The show is partly inspired by the writings of scholar Christina Sharpe, who, in her book “In the Wake: Blackness and Being,” characterizes anti-Blackness as an atmosphere, or “weather,” that coats everything in the U.S. Furniture is transformed into large-scale jack-like objects and colors evoke the flash of police spotlights. Drawing on the sights and sounds and language of the fair, she collapses the carnival and the prison, revealing how deeply intertwined punishment is with entertainment and spectacle. In her first solo exhibition at Regen Projects, “FAIR GROUNDS,” Smith expands upon “A Clockwork,” first shown in the 2022 Whitney Biennial. Items that are usually bolted to the floor, restricting a person’s movement, become kinetic. But the octagons and poles forming this sculpture were sourced from aluminum tables and seats used in prison visiting rooms. The black metal structure resembles a rotating Ferris wheel, its motion slow and seemingly unending. With just a week to go before the grand opening of their new café, the twins will use their revitalized connection with each other to make sure this is the killer’s final page.At first glance, Sable Elyse Smith’s “A Clockwork” (2021) looks like it was transported from an amusement park. But as Keaton and Koby know, two heads are always better than one, especially when it comes to mysteries. The murder, which occurred in public between light-rail stops, seems impossible for the police to solve. But this new chapter of their lives could end on a cliffhanger after Koby’s foster brother is found murdered. Years later, they reunite and decide to make up for lost time and capitalize on their shared interests by opening up a well-stocked bookstore and cozy soul-food café in the quaint Pacific Northwest town of Timber Lake. When Koby Hill and Keaton Rutledge were orphaned at age two, they were separated, but their unbreakable connection lingered. In this page-turning new mystery series, fraternal twins Keaton and Koby will pull double duty when they take down a killer while preparing to open their new bookstore and soul-food café, Books & Biscuits.
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