Mark T SmithSecret Societies

June 2014

All works for this exhibition were created in Miami in 2014 and are the first series to be exhibited since 2010 by artist Mark T Smith.

Four years between exhibitions is an unusually long time for this extremely in-demand, internationally exhibited artist. After a solo

exhibition in 2010 and a traumatic personal event, the artist made the decision to spend some time being introspective about life and his life’s

work. The artist spent most of 2010-2012, teaching, curating various exhibitions, executing a number of private and corporate commissions; all while archiving his older works from 1990-2010 and continuing his

love of drawing from the figure.

This time period was a return to the basics and an opportunity to review the work in a new, more mature and sophisticated context. In

fact, some of the canvas and paper used for this exhibition are repainted works from earlier periods, scraps, old drawings, and pieces

of larger works.

This transformation has been happening in the context of the world becoming truly global for the first time in a simultaneous experience. The continued development in the global technology businesses; the reduced scope of global American influence; the slow wind down of

the American Democracy through citizen apathy and diminished engagement; and an Art World ruled by financial speculation and Art

as “commodity”.

While anyone who knows Mark T Smith, most likely knows him has a relentless optimist, a real-world problem solver, this show might reveal a serious, more mature side of the artist. The concepts for the works in this show were combined with a graphic style of work

that has drawn influences from the “street art” movement; his experiences in New York, Miami, Rio, and his other global travels; the prevalence of tattoos as personal artistic statements; the artist’s

visual language and personal experiences.

Artists have long been observers of their times, through visual metaphor commenting on injustice; social issues; evolving political,

religious, technological, or economic values; and other human concerns – through the creation of work intellectually compelling

while equally emotional and aesthetic.

This, more than anything, has been for centuries what distinguished important work as abiding and indelibly relevant to today’s

collector as well as generations yet to come.

“Secret Societies” is the artist’s first exhibition in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

A Brief History of Global Domination / 48x60 inches /

Mixed media on canvas / 2013

This piece is a reaction to the current state of affairs in the United States of America. The composition is a twisted collection of toxic components – a bottle of booze being constricted by a skull-headed cobra, a drone gathering information and filling a low ball tumbler with its toxic content with an internal combustion engine symbolized by the V8 (with gasser pipes) powering the whole operation.  The absurd contraption is self powered by the tears of the skull/cobra deity.

Apathy is the Enemy / 48x60 inches / Mixed media on canvas / 2013

The events that inspired this expression were the myriad of public shootings in the United States last year, the mindless reporting on the events, the mock outrage of the citizenry – “trauma events” in news parlance,  grade schools, malls, stores, military bases, the list of barbarous targeted acts goes on and on. Nothing done. Nothing. I bore witness to the first wave of this cultural shift – my first solo show was in Washington DC in 1993. Titled  - “Urban Violence, coming to a Suburb near you”.  Very Special Arts was the charitable organization that backed and benefited from the show. This the event that captured the nation’s zeitgeist - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcyyCi2b2AY and http://www.marktsmith.com/press/through-the-eyes-of-artists/ . These happened on the same day.

The same hollowing of the inner cities and the replacement of a vibrant culture build on co-existence with a violent, dependent one with a permanent short term outlook. The unsolved structural decay has spread to the rural and post industrial areas of the country. As the wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few, the replacement culture is the wasteland of apathy.

“Absence suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement, lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting”. Webster. What else can explain the current state of affairs. I see lots of people out in the world doing great and generous things for their fellow human beings. Pure, selfless acts. These actions should inspire, create a call to action, motivate. But theirs is the same path of the lonely monk that worked to save the goodness, the light and the intellectual achievements of humankind. Thankless, forgotten. The number of enlightened or even socially functional humans seems to be eclipsed many times over by the foolish, the hopeless, the arrogant, the selfish, the delusional, but in this list of the virtueless bows it head in subservience to the power of the mob – the apathetic. The largest majority just does not care. The excuses run the gamut, but in the end, they are just excuses.

Wrath / Mixed Media / 48x60 inches / Mixed Media on Canvas / 2013

“Popular discontent with the drone program has built slowly as drone missions grew from 50 strikes under President George W. Bush to more than 400 under President Obama, and it dawned on Americans that remote-controlled killing had become a permanent fixture of national policy.” – The New York Times, Editorial Board, April 7, 2013

“As the President of the United States gave his outraged speech on children’s deaths, he simultaneously moved to shield from transparency the targeted drone assassination program he has built up and nurtured — which has, during his time in office, killed more noncombatants than have all U.S. mass shootings during the same period. This fact, rarely brought up in the gun debate, provides some needed context for media coverage of all the political outrage.” – David Freddoso, The Examiner. April 18, 2013.

“Charisma” / 2009 / cast Parian, 37”h 29”w 1.5”d, Edition of: 26 Sculptures (A-

Z), 5 Artist Proofs and 4 collaborator’s Proofs.

This sculpture is an editioned piece created by Mark T Smith and his one of

his first sculptures. The process to create this artwork started with a

maquette at 100% of the scale of this final editioned piece. This maquette was cast in a foundry and that mold begot the result you see here in this

installation. The horse is an icon that the artist works with often. The piece

is cast in crushed marble.

“Sculpture is the final frontier for a painter and draftsman – finally to

reach out into the world. The newness of the experience is intoxicating, the challenges exciting and fresh. The

first baby-steps into this world return me to the feeling that I had as a

very young child making art. I am approaching this new expression with a renewed love of the creative process,

the tabula rasa of a wise child and have fallen in love again with Arts’

seductive forces” - Mark T Smith

Phobia / 22x30 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014

Phobia. What are you afraid of.... Do you

confront these fears head on or do you avoid

the confrontation? In this piece the viewer

confronts a open coffin filled with a large cobra

with a skull for a head. Death, Poison, Lies,

Snakes, Loss of Control, the Supernatural. This is a

representation of the opening of your personal

pandora’s box of fear.

Private Empire / 22x30 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014

Private Empire. This painting deals with the

privatization of the American empire. Maybe the American dream was

privatized long ago. Is it a so called righteous war,

or a healthcare plan, or a safe way to buy a house or

is it a research and development lab for the companies that lead the

charge, financially controlling the political class, running the world from behind glass desks.

Blackwater, Solyndra are the minor leagues, the

larger forces move with no impunity - quietly giving

over your private files, emails, pictures, outright selling your data to the

highest bidder.

322 / 19x24 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014  

The anointed ones. The private clubs, the private bankers, the private opportunities, the insider trader. The kings and the king-makers. All cut from the same cloth, all educated the same way, all interlocked, intermarried, slicing the pie into smaller and smaller slivers. We go to the same well again and again expecting a different result. The blame rests squarely with ourselves.

This piece is a layered work, two drawings overlaid, the top piece is created on a translucent vellum and the piece below on archival bristol. The artist likes this techinique, it has the feel of inperminent and temporal soul to it. It favors process over

product and captures the chaos and the victory of the moment in the studio.

AR 15 Eagle / 22x30 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014

AR 15 / 22x30 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014

Clandestine / 22x30 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014

Clandestine. As the break down of the Fourth Estate continues unabated, coupled with the rise of an apathetic general population, it leaves only the fringe players to contest the field of battle. Long forgotten is the big idea, the greater good, the long term. Technology marches forward relentlessly . This painting is about the

start of the rise of the machines, the first class to graduate from the Air Force Academy has been graduating unmanned vehicle pilots for several years. This painting is about the first mechanized icon of the 21st century -

the drone 1.0

Honk Tonk Super Hooch 2014 / 22 x 30 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014

This is a combination of many icons from the artist’s personal language. The bottle was inspired by a mural that the artist created in the 1990’s in the back room of a fine drinking establishment in

Philadelphia. That mural was part of a series of works that lead in part to the Absolut Smith Vodka promotion in 1996. This piece combines that older iconography with the newest trends emerging in

this Secret Societies exhibition.

The Rise of the Machines / 22x30 inches / Mixed Media / 2013

First Draft of History of Global Domination / 22x30 inches / Mixed media on paper / 2014

Studio Shots show in process2013/14

Linoleum Block Carving forSecret Societies 2014

Studio Shot / Printing in process

Linoleum Block Print Remarques. / Printed on a variety of papers, some archival, some not. This suite of prints is some of the most relaxed, non dogmatic approach to the genre that the artist has attempted thus far in his career / Sizes

and Materials vary.

FIN