Until Jan. 8, 2018, Olsen Gruin Gallery in New York City presents a solo exhibition of new paintings by American artist Tom Smith, including several large-scale works. Smith, who is recognized for his investigation into the psychological impact of color and light, utilizes acrylic and silkscreen on canvas to produce bold, edgy paintings that incorporate psychedelic motifs and a contemporary sensibility.
The exhibition, titled “Swimming in My Head,” showcases a range of recent pieces that emphasize Smith’s distinctive strip-painting technique. In this method, he creates abstract images, slices them into thin vertical strips, and then reassembles those fragments to form a surface that reads like a distorted television image — an effect that alternates between calm and energetic, inviting quiet contemplation and active visual engagement at the same time.
Smith’s layered process results in paintings that operate on several levels. From a distance the works read as unified fields of color and rhythm; up close the strips and silkscreened textures reveal a deliberate tension between fragmentation and cohesion. The silkscreen application adds a flat, graphic quality that offsets the painterly depth of the acrylic layers, while the repeated strip motif introduces movement and a subtle optical vibration to each composition.
Visitors to the exhibition will encounter pieces that vary in scale but remain consistent in their formal concerns: color relationships, surface patterning, and a push-and-pull between controlled structure and spontaneous gesture. The reassembled strip format can produce surprising visual harmonies or dissonances, depending on how Smith manipulates line, hue, and spacing. These dynamics encourage viewers to consider how perception is constructed — how a coherent image arises from discrete parts and how small shifts in alignment alter meaning.
Among Smith’s sources of inspiration for the new work, he cites the films of Hayao Miyazaki, whose imagery and sense of wonder inform Smith’s approach to atmosphere and narrative suggestion. Rather than illustrate a literal story, Smith borrows Miyazaki’s ability to evoke mood and memory through color, light, and layered detail, translating cinematic influence into an abstract pictorial language. The result is work that feels cinematic in scope while remaining resolutely painterly.
Olsen Gruin Gallery is located at 30 Orchard Street in Lower Manhattan and is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The gallery’s presentation of Smith’s solo exhibition offers an opportunity to experience these recent works in person, where scale, texture, and subtle optical effects can be fully appreciated. Whether encountering a single panel or a large-scale composition, viewers can expect a thoughtful investigation of perception, color, and the emotionally charged possibilities of abstraction.
The exhibition’s title, “Swimming in My Head,” captures the immersive quality of Smith’s paintings: images that seem to hover at the edge of recognition, shifting as the viewer moves and inviting repeated, attentive looking. Smith’s work resists quick summaries; instead it rewards lingering observation, revealing new formal relationships and emotive nuances over time.
For collectors, students, and anyone interested in contemporary painting, this show presents a concise overview of Tom Smith’s current practice. The combination of silkscreen technique, acrylic color fields, and the strip-based reassembly gives these paintings a distinctive visual identity while also engaging broader questions about image construction, memory, and the way color can shape emotional response.