Architecture + Art
Phillip K. Smith III: Three Parallels
Oct 29, 2022 - Aug 6, 2023
Southern California artist Phillip K. Smith III creates a site-specific, commissioned work that highlights changes in perception as related to light, color, time, and space.
Southern California artist Phillip K. Smith III creates experiential art that highlights changes in perception as related to light, color, time, and space. Using reflection, varying translucency, and shifting color, the artist’s interior installations provide richly hued environments that respond to the spatial and atmospheric conditions. As with other artists of the Light and Space movement, Smith transforms spaces to expand the sensorial experience of viewers. This exhibition presents a new large-scale, site-specific work that incorporates Smith’s precisely paced program of changing colors.
The exhibition Three Parallels is the seventh in the SMoCA series Architecture + Art, which has commissioned architects and artists over the past 10 years to create site-specific installations that respond to the spatial, environmental, and social context of the Museum. The series pushes forward the increasingly important area of creative activity that lies between architecture and art.
As a trained architect and practicing artist, Smith is well versed in both worlds. While his work is predominantly based in object-making, it also seamlessly incorporates the environment. Through an invisible use of technology, the gallery projects a future in which our lives have a more symbiotic relationship with the digital realm. The programmed color changes quietly affect the viewer’s relationship to the surrounding architecture. In this new and evolving surrounding, visitors navigate around large mirrors that reflect and project infinite light and shadow.
Organized by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Curated by Jennifer McCabe, director and chief curator.
Exhibition support provided by Walter & Karla Goldschmidt Foundation and Louise Roman & Will Bruder.
Bios
Phillip K. Smith III
Photo: Lance Gerber
After growing up in Southern California’s Coachella Valley, Phillip K. Smith III received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. From his Palm Desert, CA studio, he creates light-based work that draws upon ideas of space, form, color, light + shadow, environment, and change.
Featured in hundreds of online and print publications, Phillip is known for creating large scaled temporary installations such as Lucid Stead in Joshua Tree, Reflection Field and Portals at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, ¼ Mile Arc in Laguna Beach, and The Circle of Land and Sky at inaugural 2017 Desert X exhibition. All of these installations are featured in his latest catalog titled Five Installations published by Grand Central Press. His public artworks are sited in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Kansas City, Nashville, Oklahoma City and beyond; and the artist was recently commissioned to create permanent, light-based works for the cities of West Hollywood, CA and Bellevue, WA. The artist’s work was included in the exhibition and catalog Unsettled organized by the Nevada Museum of Art and artist Ed Ruscha in 2017. https://www.pks3.com/
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