Morgan Smith

Artist Statement

My work calls into question hyper–commodity consumerism in the material orgie Jean Baudrillard calls modernity.

I lay bare my personal obsessions with my own belongings: my impulses for collecting, categorizing, and arranging. Then too, I seek out the discarded belongings of others that have been donated or thrown away. I am particularly drawn to objects that invent short-lived desires to have them.

In my “Spaintings”(sculpture paintings), these once-downcycling artifacts become reborn into glimpses of meaning unimagined by their first makers and builders. I remove the functionalism of these artifacts by joining them together in painterly rivers of homogenizing merges. I pour latex paint that oozes and engulfs separate items and fuses them together as one. Although dry to the touch, the paint appears to be fresh, wet and in motion, almost as if it were suspended in time-- halted to allow a closer view of a fleeting moment.

Portions are identifiable through hidden clues granted from the recognition of pieces of the whole. An ironing board here, a laundry hamper there, sometimes an entire dining room set emerges as the work reveals itself. I contemplate a contemporary return of good sense and moderation through whimsical manipulation. One can dream.