April 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AJ SMITH: FACES New Drawings
Exhibition Dates: April 21, 2007-May 26, 2007
Reception for the Artist: Saturday, April 21, 2007, 6-8 pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday: 10:00am - 5:30pm, Saturday: 11:00am - 5:30pm
Public Contact: 310-836-9055

Koplin Del Rio Gallery is pleased to announce the debut exhibition of drawings by Arkansas artist, Aj Smith.

In his larger-than-life graphite portraits, Aj Smith is attempting to honestly depict his subjects. Often using people familiar to him, he captures intimate snapshots that reflect a moment in time. Direct and engaging, his characters are so convincingly depicted that their demeanor offers fuel to speculate on their moods, attitudes, and general disposition. In one single expression, Smith creates an entire personality.

It is in the execution that Smith’s drawings demonstrate their subtlety. The scale in which Smith works envelopes the viewer’s field of vision and encourages interaction with not only the whole portrait, but also with its parts and its surface. Move closer to the piece and its complexity becomes infinitely clear. Smith’s execution, the strokes of graphite and the density of marks, is the source of the subtle modeled surface of his drawings. The textures are smooth and the lines that separate figure from background, clothes from body, eye from eyelid, all gently blend into one another. This sensation is achieved by Smith’s tendency to work and rework the surface, adding and removing graphite with great attentiveness.

These striking tonal depictions inherit nostalgic sentiments that often accompany black-and-white photographs. Because of their resemblance to old family photographs, for example, the nostalgia encourages further personal connection to the subjects. Bringing together portraits of young, middle-aged, and old people encourages comparison— youth to old age, prime of life to declining health, confidence to insecurity, innocence to wisdom. Taken individually, Smith’s portraits are powerful expressions of one personality. Together, they present the vast range of human expressions and the ways to communicate them through portraiture.

Born in Jonestown Mississippi. Aj Smith is currently a professor in the Art Department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Professor Smith holds a MFA in painting and printmaking from Queens College, City University of New York and a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri. He has been the recipient of many prestigious fellowships and awards and continues to gain national as well as international recognition through his extensive exhibition history. Aj Smith’s work can be found in many private and public collections, including the United States Library of Congress, Arkansas Arts Center Foundation, the Columbia Museum, South Carolina and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.