Cynthia-Reeves to Display Lionel Smit's MORPHOUS Exhibit, 6/13

CYNTHIA-REEVES, in collaboration with NYC Parks, the Union Square Partnership, and Art Miami / Art New York, presents MORPHOUS, a bronze sculpture by South African artist Lionel Smit, to be installed in Union Square from June 13, 2016 through April 30, 2017. A ribbon cutting ceremony and artist reception will be held at the sculpture on Tuesday, June 14 from 5:30 - 6:30pm at the sculpture. The artist will be present, along with representatives from NYC Parks and CYNTHIA-REEVES. Please join us for a meet and greet and celebration of the sculpture's installation. This will be the artist's first public art installation in the United States, and will be complemented by an exhibition of his work at CYNTHIA-REEVES' gallery venue on the campus of MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts July 30 - September 25.

Lionel Smit is an artist born in the era of South Africa's Apartheid movement and is one of South Africa's most noteworthy young artists. His work manifests his on-going fascination and respect for the indigenous peoples of his country, notably the Cape Malayan peoples. Both his paintings on canvas and his sculptures, done in bronze or in painted resin, offer us an entry point into the variety and richness that lies beneath every face - a task Smit undertakes with great sensitivity. Luscious, bold surfaces are expressed both in his paintings and in the spontaneous gestures rendered in his three dimensional figural forms. These free, unfettered marks animate the beauty and grace of the faces he sees in the neighborhoods around his studio. The scale of his work invokes both a sense of celebration, and of power.

This latest work, MORPHOUS, is an exploration of hybrid identity and its ever-changing nature within South Africa's social landscape. This particular piece evokes a question of time, of past and future, and the balance point at which his country finds itself as it embarks on the next chapter of a post-Apartheid and post-Nelson Mandela South Africa, a future South Africa. This "double-vision" is a foretelling, and an acknowledgement of what has already passed, a societal commentary without judgment. The figures are charged with an emotive and gestural energy, a hallmark of Smit's evocative work. The artist writes:

My fascination with portraiture and the abstraction of color plays a dualistic role in my artistic expression and creation.The combination of the representation of human form, and the mercurial quality of emotions,translated by color, line and form, is what inspires the imaginative and abstract essence of the work

Describing his work, Jason Rosenfelt, Department Chair and Professor of Art History at Marymunt Manhattan College, New York, writes:

Lionel Smit's process is adaptive, inventive, and physically engaged. He paints abstract canvases and lets them sit around the studio, ideas gestating, until he is ready to project photographs of the model on them, in a mode that recalls Andy Warhol's approach to portraiture. But Smit does not work with reproductive processes..., instead relying on his hand to transcribe form, and frequently reworking images multiple times, such that color and line merge, breaking down both...His bronzes made in the traditional lost wax process, are treated as fragmented surfaces subject to polychromatic surface experimentation inside and out.

Lionel Smit was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1982, he started exhibiting straight after art school at Pro Arte Alphen Park. He now lives and works in Cape Town. Best known for his contemporary portraiture executed through monumental canvasses and sculptures, Lionel is represented locally in South Africa, London, and by CYNTHIA-REEVES in the US. He exhibits regularly and is considered one of SA's youngest proven artists. Over the past 10 years he has established a substantial international following with collectors ranging from the Standard Chartered Bank to Laurence Graff Art Collection at Graff Delaire wine estate. Smit's painting has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, where it received the Viewer's Choice Award, as well as selected as the "face" of the BP Portrait Award 2013 for all campaigns. He was recently honored with a Ministerial Award from the Department of Culture for Visual Art.

NYC Parks' Art in the Parks program has consistently fostered the creation and installation of temporary public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, collaborations with arts organizations and artists have produced hundreds of public art projects in New York City parks. For more information visit www.nyc.gov/parks/art.

The Union Square Partnership (USP) is a not-for-profit community-based organization proudly serving the 14th Street-Union Square neighborhood for 40 years. USP's mission is to improve the quality-of-life for the district's residents, businesses and visitors, by providing public safety, sanitation, economic development and marketing services, and investing in the beautification of Union Square Park.

"It is such an honor to welcome renowned sculptor Lionel Smit's first public art installation in the United States to Union Square during our 40th anniversary celebration year," said Jennifer Falk, Executive Director of the Union Square Partnership. "As we reflect on four decades of creating partnerships and serving the area, we appreciate just how far Union Square has come and how our past has shaped this neighborhood's bright future. Lionel Smit's inspiring piece is sure to captivate the hundreds of thousands who visit Union Square every day."

Art Miami LLC is the leading international contemporary and modern art fair in the Wynwood District of Miami that takes place each December, which attracted over 82,000 collectors, curators and visitors from around the globe in 2015. The company's New York iteration, ArtNY, runs concurrent with the Frieze Art Fair the first week of May, located on the Navy Piers in New York. Art Miami featured a significant work by Lionel Smit in 2014 - a vanguard public art installation at the entryway to the fair, comprised of forty figural works. The piece, entitled Accumulation of Disorder, will be on view again at CYNTHIA-REEVES' gallery on the campus of MASS MoCA from July 9 through the end of August.

CYNTHIA-REEVES represents an international roster of established artists who share a process-apparent sensibility in their art. We are committed to artwork that demonstrates an authentic voice, an innovative use of materials and an appreciation of the mark in diverse media: site-based installation, video, sculpture, painting and works on paper. A sub-text to the gallery's program is artwork that provokes a discourse around the convergence of art and science, as well as our relationship to the natural world - a discourse essential to the examination of contemporary art and culture within the context of these broader challenges.

For more information on the artist, the installation schedules, the exhibition details and to visit the online gallery, please go to CYNTHIA-REEVES.com or call 212 714 0044.

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