We are pleased to announce our second Artist’s Edition, generously donated to the Mahler & LeWitt Studios by the artist. All proceeds will go directly towards supporting our 2017 program. 

Sandy Smith, a New York based sculptor from Scotland, where he studied at the Glasgow School of Art, was in residence in Spoleto during the first session of 2016. His work encourages us to recognise the complex, often manipulative, ‘techniques of organisation’ that our information rich society develops to store, manage and disseminate meaning. In recent works he sets up conversations between rigid sculptural forms, using commonly available building materials, and free-flowing poetic texts, often deployed as patterns. His drawings and the subsequent prints play out these interactions in a two dimensional format.

In an interview with curator Guy Robertson, available here in full, Smith discusses his interest in data arrays and the information economy. He also describes the text used in the FLAT HEAT FLAT WANT prints and the influence of Spoleto on his work:

“My palette has been sun bleached, informed by the colours in the town and on the buildings which I’m moving through. These peaches and creams, magnolias, light greens, bleached out blues. There’s also a dazed, heatstroke confusion that has crept into the language I’m using, for example the phrase; ‘Flat heat flat want your skin lies back time tied held back they toil slow loop’, which I think evokes the feeling of sitting in one of the piazzas, people-watching and melting in the heat. In Spoleto this summer the heat is overbearing — there’s a real hot light energy — which is muted by its own intensity over time.”