L. Kent Wolgamott: ‘Tales of Static Liquidity’ is most captivating painting show in Lincoln in months

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Colin C. Smith’s “Tales of Static Liquidity” on view at the Project Room through December is the most captivating painting show in Lincoln in months — even though it’s initially difficult to tell what Smith’s works really are.

Created on thin aluminum using water and dispersed pigment, water-based urethane resin, Smith’s paintings are ultra-flat and don’t display the hand of the maker ala traditional painting. Some of the pieces are buffed to a brilliant sheen, others are satiny.

The shapes are odd — with rounded corners or in Ford Motor Company ovals, and there are no frames containing the non-narrative but referential abstract works.

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Colin C. Smith labors to make the paintings as flat as possible. His “Tales of Static Liquidity” is on view at the Project Room. (Courtesy photo)

Colin C. Smith labors to make the paintings as flat as possible. His “Tales of Static Liquidity” is on view at the Project Room. (Courtesy photo)

“This is not an expression of me,” Smith said while we talked about the work at the Project Room. “It’s anti-abstract expressionism, an anti-modernist stance... I try to use a lot of that language from the past but not in its original context. I consider this a continuation of painting.”

To that end, Smith labors to make the paintings as flat as possible and most often uses the tools of the printmaker, part of his formal training, to make the pieces more graphic than painterly. Even the symbols that pop up, a letter here, a Sanskrit OM there, are placed as formal elements, not some kind of narrative clue.

That makes rare glimpses of the artist’s hand jump out at the viewer, as in the series of rectangles full of gestural marks that are embedded in “Dadgum Faux Codes Syndrome,” a 5-by-9-foot painting that dominates one wall of the one-room gallery.

But that painting isn’t necessarily about a critique of expressionism. In fact, it is expressive in its own way, with a large bluish “dynablob” (much like the dialogue bubbles in a comic strip only much less uniformly shaped) dominating the center of the piece.

That ambiguity allows the work to function on multiple levels — as formal pieces that combine imagery and techniques associated with printmaking into painting while exploring the essential flatness of the work, and as commentaries on and connections to the visual oversaturation of media/digital culture.

Grounded in the present, Smith’s paintings look to signs — like the Ford emblem he saw over cornfields that inspired a pair of oval pieces or a takeoff on the “winding road” road sign.  The pieces become something of signs themselves, but without direct commercial or practical referents.

Even when he makes a nod to the classical by embedding linen in the resin to get the grid that is seen underneath those paintings, Smith moves it into the contemporary, and he uses pixilation in the paint to make a direct connection to the digital world and computer monitors that dominate today’s visual culture.

The paintings are brightly colored and pulsate with rhythm and movement. And they play spectacularly off the sculptural elements in the exhibition — “blobs” made out of painted glue and cast aluminum sculptures in emerald pink, lime green and purple.

“Tales of Static Liquidity” fills the Project Room literally from floor to ceiling, even spilling over into the hallway outside the gallery. The hanging by Smith and Project Room director Craig Roper is perfect for the work, which would lose much of its vitality hung in traditional linear rows.

During the hour or so that I was at the space looking at the work and talking to Smith, I marveled at the technological expertise that is obvious in the pieces and in the clear thought and effort that go into making them.

“My studio is like a sort-of factory, a paint factory or a body shop,” Smith said. To wit, a buffer like those used in auto body work is the final step in a labor intensive process in which Smith sands the resin down to a brilliant smooth finish, starting with 500- grain sandpaper, moving up to 2,000-grain before bringing in the buffer.

Whether the surfaces gleam or are satiny soft, Smith’s paintings have surprising depth in their flatness, the result of layer upon layer of resin and pigment — sometimes up to 200 on each work. “Dadgum Faux Codes Syndrome,” for example, took Smith a month to make working every day.

Flatness is a trend in contemporary painting, and Smith’s work is every bit as hip as anything you’ll see in Chelsea. But his art clearly isn’t a response to the style of the moment, but a well-thought-out, meticulously developed body of work about painting in the 21st century.

But what makes it among the handful of best gallery shows in Lincoln this year is the pure visual appeal that grabs the attention and doesn’t let go.

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.