Meet Sei Smith

Got another cool artist for ya here. Here's Sei Smith, a New York-based artist who went to school in Chicago. Now he's come back to do work that is colorful, beautiful, and futuristic.

I got to meet him in his East Village studio that just kinda oozes New York. Below,he talks about New York and Chicago, his guerrilla pop-ups, and some more serious art talk.

Everyone should definitely go check his website or Instagram.

Bull Fighting A Mad LIB by Sei Smith

Bullfighting is a DANK sport which is very popular in DARIEN, CT. A bullfighter is called a matador, and his equipment consists of a long, sharp TOTEM called a COCOON, and a bright red BONET. He waves his BONET at the bull, which makes the bull SENSUAL and causes him to charge. The matador then goes through a series of RAD maneuvers to avoid getting caught on the bull's EAR. If the matador kills the bull, the spectators yell, "MOMMY!" and throw their REINDEER into the ring. If the bull wins, they yell "MUCK MUCK MUCK!!" and call for another matador. Bullfighting is a very MELLIFLUOUS sport, but it will never be popular to America because Americans don't believe in cruelty to COLD CUTS.

Would You Rather…

Would you rather be trapped in a dark closet with a swan or a scorpion? Please explain why.

A swan. Swans are known to transform into humans and hopefully this newly transformed human would speak the same language as me, but if not I’m sure we could find some way to communicate. Then we wouldn’t be trapped in a dark closet, we’d be just hanging out in a small room with no lights.

Some Questions with James Paris

What is your all time best ever cure for a hangover?

Sleeping and drinking water before passing out as a preemptive cure. Spending the day drinking water and sleeping can be the curative inverse of spending the night chilling with friends and drinking alcohol. It’s all adventures and liquid.

What is your creative process like, how does it all start and what happens when you’re in the groove ?

Ideas for a new series of work or guidelines for an experimental exhibition will just pop into my head as I’m in the studio working or talking with friends. But with most of the art ideas I come up with there is a system or loose set of perimeters that contain the idea for the work, so when I’m in the studio I don’t have to wonder what to do, I just get to work creating the objects that convey the idea as clearly (and often as varied) as possible.

Often the idea is to create work that has an interactive and conversational relationship to the viewer, so once the piece is created I hang it up and move around, seeing what different colors and shapes emerge from the movement. If the movement invoked in look at the painting feels stale, I get back to work making adjustments.

Also sometimes I take pictures on my phone and see how that experience is and if I have fun interacting and later thinking about the work (i.e. how it relates to the historical trajectory of painting or how it may invert its formal references). If I enjoy looking at the piece and/or it was interesting to think about then the piece is done (and hopefully it mirrors other people experience with the work). I also think it’s fun for art to be an entry point to engage with art theory or criticism but it’s also fun for art to be a prop for a selfie or a surreal iPhone pic born out of cropping.

It’s important that this dual experience of art does not become a hierarchy (as it sometimes does) that values theory over experience because with art they cannot be separated

You’ve staged a few guerrilla art pop-ups around the city, where is the one perfect place you would love to have one?

The Bronx Zoo or Kirsten Dunst’s House.

Chicago deep dish or a New York slice?

New York slice for sure. My favorite New York pizza is Two Boots, that’s the pizza I grew up eating in the East Village.

What are your top three essential items for surviving NYC in the summer?

1. Air conditioning for sleeping. If you don’t have air conditioning, find friends who do and have fun slumber parties. Then they might even make breakfast for you when you wake up, but it’s more polite to treat your hosts to brunch at a hot new spot.

2. A shower for cleaning off the sweat.

3. A phone for calling friends to loiter with.

Your use in vibrant colors seems meticulous in your more recent projects, specifically Reflections 2 and Iridescence 2. How do you decide which colors to use and how to make them interact with each other?

When I choose colors for a piece, I don’t think about it, it’s all improvisational or instinctual because on a conceptual level the actually color doesn’t matter to me. The effects of the colors, the way bright colors glow more bright then dull ones, that how I choose what kind of color, but wether it’s florescent green or florescent red it doesn’t matter. When I’m in the studio I always start out making the same painting in a slightly different way, trying to find something that will surprise me or find a new system to produce a curtain effect.

The colors do get more meticulous and specific though as I keep using the same 6 or 7 florescent colors, because as I combine different colors I learn what colors’ reflections will blend well together, and sometimes it’s not just simple color theory. For example blue and pink blend together to make a brighter purple then blue and red (maybe this is a known occurrence, but I’ didn’t know it till I was experimenting in the studio).

Who are some other artists, past or present, that you think deserve more attention?

David Horvitz, Penelope Umbrico, Oluf Elioson (I think he gets a fair amount of art world attention, especially with his recent exhibition at the Tate Modern, but for society as a whole mate more attention), Ki Smith Gallery (it’s not an artist but definitely an art entity that deserves more attention, I may be biased but all opinions are).

Any final comments? (This is your electronic soapbox for one last answer.)

Here’s the beginning of a manifesto I’m writing:

This manifesto is meant to evolve with the future, each tenet is followed by a question that relates to the reality of that idea’s enactment in our current time. These questions should be consistently rewritten to reflect our ever progressing future. Eventually these tenets will also become obsolete, but hopefully as the questions change they will inform the creation of new tenets and better ideas. These tenets are in fact not tenets at all, but living ideas, in which these words are only the seeds of a larger and much more majestic plant. For you the readers, please remember you are the collective gardeners of this plant. Help it grow and shade you from the harsh light of less forgiving ideologies.

Artists should be paid for their participation with ideas and communities not their creation of goods. (Who pays for this participation and what happens to the physical objects created?)
There must be multiple critical conversations going on simultaneously in the Art World, with no conversation becoming culturally paramount. Art is not the place for cultural hierarchy, because that type of social relevance often breeds shallow investigations. (What if some ideas are more cultural important then others?)
Separate money and value in art. (Does this need to be done on a societal level to happen in art?)
Public museums need to take a bigger role in the future of art and less in the glorification of the past. (Isn’t the goal of a museum to focus on the past and preserve its history?)
Artists should never compromise the integrity of their art. (What is the integrity of art?)
There is no need for a general definition of Art. Art should be judged on its intention. (How do we differentiate what is art and what isn’t?)
There must be a larger variety of serious venues for exhibiting art. Move away from a gallery as paramount model. (How do we control a quality standard if art can exhibit anywhere?)

Sei Smith