Raised in the Detroit area amid the social and economic upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, Christopher Smith developed an early awareness of the ways in which art and memory persist through time. In his own creative practice, he engages with ancient sculptural traditions while addressing contemporary human experience. “Every time the model poses,” he remarks, “I am amazed at the redolence of the human form.”
In A View from the Box, Smith demonstrates his virtuoso technique—using extreme foreshortening reminiscent of Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna’s Dead Christ (c. 1483), and carved relief that casts shadows to heighten the illusion of depth. Smith also reflects on the personal dimensions of his work:
“I just thought ‘King and Queen,’ and then went into some family history of my own. When I was a kid, my father's parents would come to visit and they always sat in two identical chairs in the house, and it became the Will and Estelle show. They could banter with each other, not-so-gently bickering back and forth, and in my mind they were like Fred and Ethel on I Love Lucy. So the dominant role of television in creating experience all brought up family memories like that. My grandparents didn't sit around the house nude like the figures in the relief (at least not in front of me), but the nudity of the figures is a metaphor for the depth of open, nude, raw relationships. That's where it came from. However, I don't want viewers to have to know anything about my grandparents to get something out of the sculpture....People have commented to me about the distance between the figures, as though they should be doing something sensual together, and yet there is a gulf and nothing is happening.”
Smith earned his BFA in Sculpture from the University of Michigan and went on to establish his own studio. He has created sculpture for film, public monuments, religious settings, and corporate commissions, and has exhibited widely across North America, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. His work is represented in public and private collections including Woodmere, the Seven Bridges Foundation (CT), and Brookgreen Gardens (SC), as well as in public installations such as the Park Avenue Atrium, New York.
Smith has taught at the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia, where he received both the Frank Gasparro Memorial Fellowship and the Dene M. Louccheim Faculty Fellowship. His sculpture 4PM earned the Lillian Heller Curator's Award at Chesterwood in 2010. He exhibits with independent curator Eileen Tognini and is represented by Seraphin Gallery, Philadelphia.
