An integral part of the downtown New York art scene in the 1980s, American artist Paul Smith got involved with the legendary Lower East Side gallery ABC No Rio in 1983 exhibiting work from the civil war in Guatemala. Primarily a painter making panoramic works, Smith began using a homemade pinhole camera to experiment with perspectives, creating a series of black and white landscapes and sensuous scenes of sexual self-discovery made during the height of the AIDS crisis.
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In the new exhibition, The Human Curve opening Saturday, November 14 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York, Smith brings together a selection of these works, some of which were first exhibited in Bodily Fluids at Greathouse Gallery in the East Village in the 1980s.
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“It was an exciting time for me,” Smith recalls. “Through Tim Greathouse I met David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar, Zoe Leonard, and Marcus Leatherdale. I had three solo shows at Greathouse Gallery, but Bodily Fluids was the least commented on show at the time. It wasn’t so common then for people to exhibit sexually intimate and frank work then.”
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Here, Smith takes us back to the streets and rooftops of New York for a tender look at beauty, desire, and love.
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