At the heart of his studio and turned towards the sun SMITH lets his intimate and philosophical universe emerge.His work hovers between photographic portraits, evanescent and spectral, and fictional projects for the stage in search of our cosmic origins, our essence.
SMITH,
as portrayed by Agathe Pichard, is an elusive figure: ghostlike, with
the head of a robot, lunar hair, a voice synthesised from the stars.
What kind of artist are we dealing with? A cyborg, stricken with
melancholy and obsessed with the future, with disappearance, with
appearance. In a word: a phenomenon, a fabulous phenomenon.
Something. Someone. Someone? SMITH isn't one, SMITH is a
constellation, SMITH is plural in the diversity of his work and his
mythological range.
It takes all the delicacy of the film to play on
the blurs that, effectively, erode the boundaries between genres,
faces and landscapes in SMITH's work. It takes all the softness of a
long-lost profile picture to compose this portrait of SMITH, one in
which his spectral relationship to the image is revealed. The image,
as it grips us and lets us slip away, capturing the invisibility of
ceaselessly appearing and disappearing bodies.
Photography is the
intimacy of distance, he tells us in his bewitching voice,
approaching us with the bionic eye of his lens.
SMITH is a whole
collection of mythologies, subject to constant change, ever in the
process of becoming 'other'. Photography rubs shoulders with
meteorites, dance composes a choreographic sequence for quantum
physics, video intertwines with philosophy. New alliances, as the
concept of désidération
suggests. Like the union of melancholy and the stars. Like a stellar
friendship that can be imagined, here, in a park, face to face with
our star, while night falls behind our closed eyes.
Lucien
Raphmaj, writer
Paris - September 2020
Lucien
Raphmaj was born in 1985. He lives and works in Paris. He wrote the
texts for SMITH's Astroblème and Valparaiso (si tu pleux) and in
2020 published Blandine
Volochot
and Capitale
Songe.
More info
The Artist
SMITH was born in 1985 in Paris.
Indisciplinary artist, he lives and works in Paris.
He is represented by the Gallery Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris.
SMITH was born in 1985 in Paris.
Indisciplinary artist, he lives and works in Paris.
He is represented by the Gallery Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris.
Director
Agathe PichardCinematographer
Thierry Goron
Editor
Benoît Ufferte
Annika Grill
Duration
06:34
