Artist-in-Residence: Phillip K. Smith III

Spring 2015

Light + Shadow Works

April 7 – May 3

Jaffe- Friede Gallery

Smith will exhibit work from his Light + Shadow Works, and Faceted Discs series.  Focusing on the studied blending of changing color, the sublime purity of light across form, and the reliance on light to render form, these works will present a culmination of Smith’s focus over the last several years.

Phillip K Smith III received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. From his Indio, CA based studio, he continues to push the boundaries and confront the ideas of modernist design. Drawing inspiration from the cold rigidity of the Bauhaus movement, the reductive geometries of minimalism, and the optic sensation of California’s Light and Space movement, Smith III attempts to resolve the complex challenge of finding a natural state of life and spirit within these ideological aesthetic constrictions.  The results are deceptively simple and compelling objects that seem to breathe and move as you observe and interact with them. 

Commissioned to create more than a dozen monumental public artworks in the last 5 years in Kansas City, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Arlington, VA, Phoenix and multiple California locations, Smith's work was featured in the 2008 Annual Review in Art in America.  In addition to these large scaled public projects, Smith continues to work on an ever-growing list of smaller scaled works for private collections.  In 2010, Smith was awarded the Palm Springs Art Museum’s artist residency, which produced the well-received 24-foot long LED light and acrylic installation, “Aperture.”  Smith’s 55-foot tall sculpture, “Inhale/Exhale,” in La Verne, California, is featured on the cover of 500 x Art in Public, by Chris van Uffelen, published by Braun in 2011.  In October, 2013, Smith debuted “Lucid Stead,” an existing homesteader shack transformed into a light installation in the middle of the raw desert of Joshua Tree, CA.. Shortly after being named by the Los Angeles Times as a “Face to Watch in 2014 in Art”, Smith presented “Reflection Field” to 200,000 people at the April, 2014 Coachella Music and Arts Festival.  Smith is represented by Royale Projects: Contemporary Art.