Jacob Jackmauh, Caitlin McCann & Benjamin Stallings
As for me, I’m just passing through this planet
March 8 - April 14, 2024
Irina Jasnowski Pascual
Wipers
September 15 - October 29, 2023
Coco Klockner
honesty
July 8 - August 6, 2023
Morgan Canavan, Ben Estes, Marisa Takal
More Coming Back & More Returning
May 5 - June 11, 2023
Sylvie Hayes-Wallace
Center of the Universe
August 5 - September 18, 2022
Amanda Horowitz
Bad Water, True West or Between Myself the Crickets and the Coyote
performed by Sophia Cleary and Ada Friedman
July 14 & July 15, 2022
Suzanna Zak
Coming Home to the Ice Age
opening May 13 - June 24, 2022
Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, Milano Chow, Jenni Crain,
Kristin Dickson- Okuda, Rubens Ghenov, Ann Gillen, KB Jones,
Michael Kennedy Costa, Sean Macalister, Sarah McMenimen,
J. Parker Valentine, Anna Rosen
XX Perfect Souls, curated by Natalie Smith
April 1 - May 6, 2022
Justin Chance, Cameron Cameron, Tristan Higginbotham
Serendipity Trail
February 12 - March 25, 2022
Noah Furman
Beginners
December 3, 2021 - January 25, 2022
Angélique Heidler
Piselli
October 8 - November 19, 2021
Natalie Smith
Nothing Within or Without
August 13 - September 14, 2021
Celia Lesh & Esther Sibiude
A Hole Filled With Noise, curated by Colleen Billing
July 2 - August 2, 2021
E. Saffronia Downing
Field Dug Over
May 21- June 27, 2021
Matt Smoak
Body Without Organs
April 2 - May 2, 2021
Eleanor Conover
Learning From the Steep Slope
March 5 - March 30, 2021
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About
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open by appointment
located beside
320 E. Churchwell Ave
Knoxville, Tennessee
Nothing Within or Without, installation view
Nothing Within or Without, installation view
Nothing Within or Without, installation view
Nothing Within or Without, detail image
Nothing Within or Without, detail image
Nothing Within or Without, detail image
Nothing Within or Without, detail image
Nothing Within or Without, detail image
Nothing Within or Without, detail image
Natalie Smith
Nothing Within or Without
August 13- September 14, 2021
What, exactly was the beginning?
I have been having the sense that I must go back there before I can go forward. I must understand the very seed of creation to understand this destruction. And we don’t have a moment to waste.
And so I present to you in haste, a room of kisses.
In 1927, the Dutch Jesuit mathematician and astrophysicist Georges Lemaître determined what the ancient sages, mystics, and knowers had already been wailing from the stone tablets and papyri for millennia, that an expanding universe could be traced to a single point of origin: the “primeval atom”.
And what of this moment, the empyrean beginning ?
And what of its smallness and what of its greatness ?
Despite popular terminology, it wasn’t big, and there was no bang.
And what of this moment that was not seen?
And what of this vision that could not see for itself?
If it ever existed at all: only as a particle, as essence, as feeling?
Having to think with my eyes so much has made me wonder about optics and tricks and our most coyote sense, our sense of seeing.
Funny thing to be a painter and not want to trick the eyes It’s a very funny thing actually
It is what we call: going against the grain.
Because vision, in its most impure states, can be sick and can be distorted, like all of the terrible angels.
Vision can see a planet covered in concrete for the sole purpose of domination and conquering. Vision can make a whole history full of paintings that advertise bodies and goods for sale. Vision turned art into a sixty four billion dollar marketplace. Vision transforms our purest states-desire and pain-into contorted murderous rage for our fellow man.
But vision can also be perfect, which is exactly why we love our vision so much. It can be completely perfect.
Lygia Clark and Iris Murdoch said it and many others too I'm sure: our vision is not only optical. This is something I care deeply about but as a painter it puts me into a strange relationship with a medium that has been understood for at least centuries to be presenting not only tricks but also something to the eyes and the eyes alone.
But the eyes are never alone.
Like the Eye of Fatima, vision emanating from a slit though her palm, we cannot escape the eye of consciousness because it is us.
Our vision is us and our eyes are never alone.
One Buddist teacher says to another: The problem is not desire. It is that your desires are too small.
The canvas will bend and curl There is the moon
The boards will stay fixed There is the sun
No subject No figure
No object No ground
During the fertile week of ovulation, the cervix softens and feels like lips.
They took a bite of an apple but let's be real
They kissed.
I paid a lot of attention to the princesses when I was a young child. Their hair happened to look like mine in those Grimms books and I saw what happened Oh how the frog was utterly transformed Oh how I saw it so clearly.
I care about these things like I care about the medium too.
I have stood by it all of these years afterall. Calling myself a painter come hell and high water and I assure you it has been both. And I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.
The medium being the color, the mark. The medium also being the canvas, the surface.
And the third thing too:
Like the table covered in white linen on which the palm reader holds your hand in theirs,
The Medium being the space of transference.
The space of perfect vision.
In Spain, France, Indonesia and surely elsewhere, the mark of the hand has been found on the cave walls. Forty thousand years old or more. Because before there was art there was painting and before there was painting there was the imprint.
And so I present to you the mark and the surface
As simple and pure as I can imagine here for you now.
I have no more time for knowledge of any other kind and the Earth she is telling us that she doesn't either, have time.
The beginning of all creation
I will give it all away.
-Natalie Smith, 2021
As a child we learn that the hand can be used to make a painting. As a teenager, in whispers, we are told the hand can be used to learn how to kiss. Pointer finger and thumb curl into the promise of a pair of lips. In ‘Nothing Within or Without’ , Natalie Smith demonstrates that the lips can make a mark in the same way we understand a hand can make a painting.
Unstretched canvas paintings line the gridded board and batten supports of the gallery. Their surface marked with a simple gesture-- the kiss. Each rosy impression holds the deeply intimate questioning, physical labor and relationship, and intrinsic desire to connect. She tells me “this is why we do what we do”. Opening the heart, the mind and the body of the viewer to the gallery as a thoroughly affective space, with the potential to inform the viewers emotional understanding and perception of the world around them.
Natalie Smith lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Her practice uses drawing and sculpture to confront how beauty and pleasure, ambiguity and bewilderment are necessary to our survival. Recent projects include the online platform Gondola.link, Real Pain Fine Arts, and Kate's Little Angel in Los Angeles. Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at U’s in Calgary and in a public art project with the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. She received her BFA from the University of Illinois and MFA from The University of New Mexico.