Manorama – Collages & Drawings by René Smith

Bureau of General Services—Queer Division

83A Hester St., between Orchard and Allen Sts.

NY, NY 10002

Friday, February 7th, through Sunday, March 30th Thursday, April 10th

Join us for a discussion with René Smith about her work on Sunday, March 30th, at 4 PM

“This body of work is a sincere ode to longing and the beauty of men’s bodies, but it also contains small jokes, ideas about history, and references to our relationship to photography. The project is about men’s bodies seen through a woman’s eyes – the woman’s gaze – the man’s body – the body as landscape with hills and valleys to roam. The collages are made from vintage magazines from the 60’s and 70’s – a time when the male nude in widely circulating publications was new, and the idea of a woman appreciating the male nude was radical.  The paintings and drawings are based on my own photographs of friends and professional models and take on the same subject – still fairly uncommon from a woman’s point of view.” René Smith

René Smith lives and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York. She was a Visiting Lecturer in Painting at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, and has also been an artist in residence at The Gil Society in Iceland and Vermont Studio Center. She has shown her work at The Bangkok Art & Culture Center, Koi Gallery (Bangkok), NoSpace Gallery (Bangkok), BKK Art House (Bangkok), The Chiang Mai University Art Museum (Thailand), and Aljira Contemporary Art Center (New Jersey). René Smith was born in Philadelphia and received her M.F.A. in Painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Rome and her B.A. in Painting from Bennington College in Vermont. She teaches painting at St. Thomas Aquinas College.