Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to participate in the 2024 edition of Independent with a group presentation of new and recent works by Howard Smith and the artist duo Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens. Smith, Ibghy & Lemmens use their respective mediums as a catalyst for experimentation and collaboration. The works collectively encourage participation through the questioning of prescribed conventions and certitudes.
Toggling between chance and control, Smith’s painting practice is as fastidious as it is boundless. With measured, deliberate strokes, his staccato mark-making challenges the eye as similar hues blend and overlap, creating a uniform field of color that dissipates into a particulate flux of varying depth. Exploring temporality, Smith’s paintings encourage prolonged viewing, slowing perception such that they reveal themselves gradually and dynamically.
Smith’s experimentation with form and space reaches beyond the canvas in his Universe series. Pushing spatial limits, the active series is composed of a suite of small-scale paintings that vary in size and shape. Each installation boasts a presentation of a selection of hundreds of paintings, dispersed along the wall as if independent of controlled parameters. The lack of prescribed order in placement opposes conventional standards of display and upends what can be considered a single work. Renegotiating the traditional relationship between artist and patron, the Universe series invites the viewer to take on the role of curator.
Ibghy & Lemmens’ collaborative multimedia practice interrogates the means by which several disciplines translate data into fact. Examining the histories of science, economy, and statistics, the artists combine diligent research with a dedication to material exploration. Working primarily in sculpture, video, and installation, Ibghy & Lemmens question how the media, graphical representations, and other abstract visualizations transform and inform knowledge. With wit and whimsy, the artists challenge what is considered true modes of knowledge.
The colorful ceramic sculptures from their series Alternative Facts of the 21st Century concretize the rumors, misconceptions, lies, and conspiracies that have circulated since the beginning of the new millennium. Through playful representation, the ‘paramonuments’ give shape to questionable stories, claims, and events that are often taken at face value as a result of human ignorance. Each sculpture is accompanied by a brief text that lends credibility to the ‘alternative fact’ being memorialized. The series sheds light on the fine line between fact and fiction, prompting recognition of the motivations and falsities behind consumed media.
Smith, Ibghy & Lemmens engage the ordinarily passive viewer by encouraging a re-evaluation of their own positioning. What are the systems and constructions in place that dictate how we perceive news, media, art? Who is really in charge?
Location
Spring Studios
50 Varick St.
New York, NY 10013
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