This spring, artist Phillip K Smith III has embarked upon a two and a half month artist in residency program at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. This rigorous program has seen some of the most innovative artists of the last century including Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and Donald Judd. Smith III will be joining this legacy and has just unveiled new work in a solo exhibition that opened on April 7th called Light + Shadow, including his Faceted Discs. Smith III plans to release 10 “generations” of 10 Faceted Discs, each creating 100 unique works.
LIGHT + SHADOW
Smith III’s newest white sculptural forms relay a deceptive simplicity by stripping away his hallmark technology and color and instead capture the sublime purity of light and shadow. Relying on the presence and absence of ambient light to render the forms, this new body of work capitalizes on the elegance of reductive minimalism.
FACETED DISCS
Smith III has dedicated himself to create 100 new Faceted Disc works, releasing 10 “generations” of 10 discs. The first 10-20 released in 2014/2015 employ some of the same formal tenets of his over-arching Light & Shadow series, wherein the work relies solely on light and shadow’s relationship to the surface. The discs display specific angles and slants–each inherently unique–to complete the reflective, faceted interplay between visual planes and ambient light.
Photography: Lance Gerber
