Ray Smith: Nepantla

Ray Smith (American, b.1959) Born in Brownsville, TX, and raised in Central Mexico. Smith emerged in the 1980s and continues to produce exuberant paintings and sculptures characterized by an inimitable style and subject matter that reflect his bi-cultural American and Mexican heritage. Contorted and morphed figures recur throughout his work, in a hybrid that draws from his early studies of fresco painting with traditional practitioners in Mexico, and an indebtedness to Picasso, the Surrealists, and the politically daring Mexican muralists. Through these varied beings, Smith reflects upon the complexities and absurdities of society, family, politics, culture, war, and the human condition itself, framed by birth and death.

Artist, curator, and critic Andrew Woolbright is based in Brooklyn, New York, and is an MFA graduate from RISD in painting. Woolbright is the founder and director of the gallery Below Grand located on the Lower East Side in New York. In addition to curating, he is an Editor-at-Large at the Brooklyn Rail. In 2021, Woolbright curated the show Density Betrays Us with Angela Dufresne and Cash Ragona at the Hole; and curated shows at Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and Hesse Flatow in the summer or 2022. He currently teaches at School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute and is a 2021-2022 resident at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in Dumbo.