FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CEDRIC SMITH: PAINTINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

June 18 – July 13, 2009
Opening Reception: June 18, 6-8pm

Dillon Gallery is proud to present the mixed media paintings and photography of Cedric Smith. Enticing paintings of bounty, honest labor, community interests and nostalgic Americana reveal themselves to be subtle transcriptions of historical reality. Is it possible that the cotton exchange included prominent black businessmen? Could there have been a circus with black clowns in whiteface? Cedric Smith is openly engaged in a visual rendition of “what if” imagery.

This historical rearrangement is not the artist’s singular concern: the appropriated vintage photographs within the photographic compositions attest to the existence of a well to do black American society. This photographic record of middle class and wealthy black Americans at the turn of the century encouraged a series of artworks melding the past into the present. Cedric Smith’s compositions in both media are his response to provocative thoughts; visual answers appropriately formatted in the ubiquitous twentieth century media of advertising posters with vibrant economical imagery and eye catching signage.
 

CEDRIC SMITH

Cedric Smith is a self-taught painter and photographer who draws on a wide range of influences and sources, traditional and contemporary, to express his poignant observations of African-American life in the rural south. These include landscape art, pop art, brand advertising and especially photography, either his own, vintage images, or a combination of the two. Much of the Philadelphia-born, Atlanta-based artist's work is inspired by an observation from his childhood: the complete absence of African-Americans in advertising and on the labels of popular brands during that and earlier times.
 
The artist’s collection of vintage photographs provides the foreground for a related topic he is documenting: that of the disappearing black culture of the South. Juxtaposing historical imagery with contemporary settings, Smith often re-photographs these old portraits in everyday locations, each snapshot creating a direct dialogue between past and present realities, providing an enduring narrative that continues into this century. Smith’s concept behind the addition of found vintage photographs evoke an extraordinary sense of longing and loss as he makes us contemplate how the subject’s life could have been altered by a different set of circumstances.

Cedric Smith has received extensive critical acclaim for his work both in the US and abroad.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 

• 2009 Dillon Gallery, Paintings and Photographs, New York City
  Beach Institute, Savannah, GA
  Galerie Nordine Zidoun, Paris, France
• 2008 Twinhouse Gallery, Atlanta, GA
• 2007 Dillon Gallery, Playing God, New York City
  Chroma Art Gallery, Savannah, GA
• 2006 Marcus Jewish Community Center, Atlanta, GA
• 2005 DFN Gallery, New York City
• 2004 Matre Gallery, Atlanta, GA
  Tilford Art Group, Los Angeles, CA
• 2003 Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, GA
  Eclectic Connection Gallery, Summit, NJ
• 2002 Noel Gallery, Charlotte, NC
  Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, GA
• 2001 Thelma Harris Gallery, Oakland, CA
  Matre Gallery, Atlanta, GA
  In The Gallery, Nashville, TN