Smash 137 has been back in the studio preparing for his upcoming exhibition at Speerstra gallery. Smash 137 continues to excel in the contemporary art scene with his large scale paintings. With this new body of work Smash 137 builds upon his last exhibition utilizing the skills and aesthetics he has become famous for as a graffiti writer, and built cohesive style on canvas. We are really looking forward to doing a full review on the show after the exhibition opens. Watching the video preview you can see that this is a must attend event if you are lucky enough to be in Switzerland.
GF
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“Beautiful Struggle”
An unusual title for an exhibition and for the new paintings of SMASH137. Monochrome areas nestle up against each other, to break up unexpectedly.
Multicolored lines bind together to lose and find each other again. Beams like handholds create a structure rich in contrast. A blaze of color, exploding right before us in time. And yet the paintings look well-balanced. Some of them have a center, others a counterbalance. For the viewer the works look like a continual coming and going.
The paintings and writings of SMASH137 are powerful and dynamic operations. Colors are forces and to paint means to be constantly in a high energetic situation and wrestle with these forces. We will understand the correlation of energies better if we know the process of their development.
SMASH137 works on several paintings at the same time. Using similar colors, the paintings look like a sequence of forms. Sometimes we see a progression in the dynamic, sometimes a counterpoint or a backlash. The balance is hidden somewhere in this process full of confrontations. And the goal is to create harmony synchronous with the highest tension. But where are the limits of the paintings? And when are they attained? Although color is something which is perceived differently by everyone, we all can feel the power of SMASH137 when he is creating a new piece. But what is the effect, the impact on the beholder? Viewing means to understand a flow of moments which together create the happening of perception.
Therefore the fight of SMASH137 with the forces of forms and colors constitutes the complex reality which we can find in his work. Or in the words of Sun Tzu: „The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain.“ Our own experiences with life‘s struggles help us understand the power of harmony which SMASH137 gives us.So the title of the show can be both: the everlasting and painful struggle of the artist for aesthetic quality and the beauty of the strategic fight itself, the „art of war“.”
