Satirism – sat??? ?z(?)m by Nick Smith

Nick has an MA in product design. He originally started his degree designing cars but wanting something with a wider scope moved to product design. He has a successful career as an interior design architecture for hotels, bars, restaurants and ships.

Working with Patone Colour samples in his day job ignited the idea of reductive art down to the basic elements while leaving intact the iconic recognisability. Nick looks for the source of the idea or concept through pure colour working with the images of classical art, ie, Mona Lisa and Girl with Pearl Earring.

The satiric need to reduce what is art, oil paint depicting light in an internationally recognizable symbol such as the Mona Lisa and reducing it down to its elements but still retaining the image which for most of us is imprinted on our psyche. Nick says I am prone to gimmicks.

The Warhol series of cans which on first glance is just another copy of the artists most popular genre, is indeed a double entendre on Warhols dismissal by many at the time as not being proper art. In Target Practice Nick has taken the soup can making a Warholian screen print and shooting it full of holes with a shot gun (which had to be done in Canada as he could not get permission to do it anywhere in the UK). Hence, taking pot shots at Warhol in the form of what is most commonly used as practice fodder for gun enthusiasts, soup cans.

Nick Smith is represented at this exhibition by ArtDog London artdoglondon.co.uk