The Trophy Room LA is thrilled to present L.A. Bound: Los Angeles Paintings from the 1990s, a solo exhibition by Dave Smith. The exhibition runs from November 16 to December 31, 2024, and there will be an artist reception on November 16 from 5 to 9 p.m. Please join the artist and gallery in celebration.
Upon his arrival in Los Angeles in 1990, Smith rented Ed Ruscha’s former studio on Western Avenue in Hollywood—a fitting spot for an artist whose paintings are so inspired by signage, the simultaneously artful and utilitarian communication of information through color and form. Smith had little exposure to fine art growing up in rural England, but he was fascinated by the fanciful, hand-painted signs he saw advertising pubs and traveling fairs. During his years working in Florida and the Bahamas, he fixated on a 10-screen drive-in theater he passed on his daily drives. The images seem projected on the sky itself, like surreal beacons.
Combining his penchant for collage, commercial skills, and emerging enthusiasm for West Coast photorealism, Smith spent the next decade creating a body of work that evokes the duality of life in L.A. Smith found practical jobs to support himself once he moved west, working as a billboard painter union scenic artist in TV and motion picture studios, and this series reflects these influences. Painted from the perspective of someone arriving in town for the first time and encountering the contradictions of the city, these works show urban sprawls alongside ethereal interiors; they show sensuous sunsets spliced with signs for pizza and guns. One hazy mountainscape is overlaid with red tiles of text: cleaners, liquor, beauty . The combinations on these canvases are quintessentially Californian, their natural beauty augmented by the scrim of smog and signage.
Smith’s incisive and often subversive work is heavily influenced by his time in the Bahamas and Los Angeles— both places plagued (and exploited) by the idea of paradise, which often obscures and contradicts the reality of living there. Smith studied painting at the University of Derby and Middlesex University before founding the Electric Colour Company, an artist collective based in Shoreditch, London, which designed shop interiors, signage, fashion accessories, and custom car finishes for the innovative fashion scene of late 1960s. When the company dissolved in the ‘70s, Smith left for the Bahamas, where he became a teacher and well-regarded artist. He was featured in the acclaimed 2008 documentary film Artists of the Bahamas , which explores the lives and work of key artists of the initial art movement there.
