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If you visit the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) in Rockport, you will be able to explore Dr. Owen F. Smith’s latest exhibit, “Perception in Flux.” With between 20 and 25 pieces in the exhibit, Owen has created art that focuses largely on finding new and different ways to engage his audience.
Smith approaches his work with an idea first. “Sometimes that idea is in the form of a question. Sometimes it’s in the form of a statement … but often, my work comes out of asking questions both of myself and the viewer,” Smith explained. “I try to get people to think about things like what they assume or what they expect, what they know and what they don’t know.”
Many of the pieces in this particular gallery focus on questions of what art is and “why do we think art is made a certain way?”
One of the biggest influences on Smith’s art is the Fluxus group. Fluxus was a group of artists, dancers, musicians and thespians that formed in the late 1950s, drawing mostly from Europe, Japan and New York. Fluxus was a group as well as an attitude of challenging how people think about art and culture, asking many of the same questions Smith explores in his own work.
The founders of Fluxus emphasized what art and life have in common rather than what makes them separate. A Fluxus piece can be funny, silly, crazy, playful, shocking or anything the artist wants it to be – as long as it intrigues the audience and gets them thinking and questioning their own ideas.
An example of this is Smith’s “Proof of Existence,” which makes use of a series of receipts taped to the pages of a day planner and hung on a grid. The piece is interesting in that it makes use of what many would consider trash, but also makes small revelations about Smith’s life – such as the receipt from his 1999 purchase of a punk rock CD from Bull Moose Music.
Both of Smith’s parents were artists, so he grew up in a household filled with art. Throughout high school and into his early college days, he worked for his father as an assistant, but began to move away from that lifestyle as he delved further into his college education. He graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle with a B.A. in Russian studies, an M.A. in anthropology and a Ph.D. in art history. Today, along with being an artist and art historian, he is a curator, professor and scholarly writer.
He has written and edited books on Fluxus and its history, but found that to really understand it, he had to make it himself.
“In my academic study of Fluxus, I realized that a lot of what it was pushing was that idea of art needing to be done,” Smith said. “So I came to the realization that if I wanted to study Fluxus and Fluxus art, I needed to do it as well.” With that, Owen was “led back to making art,” which had been a huge part of his life growing up.
Over the course of his years as an artist, Smith has displayed his work in about 80 different national and international exhibitions. In discussing “Perception in Flux,” he commented that he doesn’t specifically have a favorite piece, but rather, he likes each of them in a different way. Some of the different pieces in this gallery are video and some are paintings. Others are digital prints and photography, along with other different forms as well.
The majority of the gallery is rather physical. For instance, in a piece called “Seeking Someone,” there is a series of eight 36-by-12-inch mirrors arranged in columns. On each mirror is inscribed large personal ads from newspapers. As the viewer is looking at the ads, he or she can see their reflection in the mirror thus becoming part of the piece itself.
“People read the personal ads even if they’re not looking for [a date], so it’s like as an artist, I’m saying that this has become, in a way, our entertainment … We stick our noses in other people’s business and sometimes it’s funny, and sometimes it’s provocative, but we become interested in what we all do.”
This is just one example of the number of interesting works you will see in “Perception in Flux.” About the overall gallery, Owen says, “I like it all because I like it in its diversity.”
The exhibition is running from February 17 to March 31 at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport. On Sunday, March 25 at 2 p.m., there will be a Gallery Talk with Dr. Owen F. Smith himself at the CMCA.
