Lucien Smith

Lucien Smith (b. 1989, Los Angeles, CA) lives and works in New York. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York in 2011. He has had solo exhibitions at many venues including the Skarstedt Gallery, New York; Salon 94, New York; Bill Brady / KC, Kansas City; Suzanne Geiss, Co., New York; OHWOW, Los Angeles; and Ritter-Zamet, London. He has been included in group exhibitions at Jonathan Viner, London; Marianne Boesky, New York; Brand New Gallery, Milan; Black Eye, New York; Mark Fletcher, New York; OHWOW, Miami Beach; The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York; The Stillhouse Group, Brooklyn, Art Production Fund Gallery, New York; ASS Gallery, New York, and Seven Eleven Gallery, New York, NY. Lucien Smith is represented by Salon 94, New York.

Lucien Smith (b. 1989) is more concerned with nature, the forces of life, and the holy and sanctified than with the art world’s fickle exhortations. Two works by Smith are on view as part of Prospect.3. One is a 2013 painting titled Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, after a Hebrew phrase in the Old Testament book of Daniel that translates, essentially, as “the future is predetermined” and usually implies that a bad event is imminent. The painting depicts a large, woozy seascape based on a 1970s postcard in Smith’s personal collection: a rocky beach turns to rust in the last light of a setting sun. Red, auburn, and brown swirl in a melody of color, interrupted only by the frosted tips of waves crashing along the rocky edge. Smith presents us with an oceanic vista drenched in stained-glass-window light—a nod to Mother Nature’s divinity. The canvas is displayed alongside another painting of his “Ark” Series, History of the Earth, which further explores the intersections of religion, science and nature.