ABOUT GEOFFREY
TODD SMITH

b. 1973, Cleveland, OH
Lives and works in Chicago, IL

Geoffrey Todd Smith employs seemingly simple structures in his vivid, intensely patterned abstract paintings. Common geometric elements – circles, ellipses, ovals and dots – inhabit a tight grid in visually confounding and colorfully explosive compositions. Given the geometry and precision in his work, Smith’s paintings are often mistaken for digital prints when seen at a distance, yet they are all hand painted. Larger shapes are filled in with gouache or enamel paint; linear elements and patterns are often hand-drawn with archival gel pens. Teetering between order and disorder, Smith invites the viewer to simultaneously consider beauty and dissonance.

On Bad at Sports in 2015, artist and critic Kevin B. Blake writes “Chicago artist, Geoffrey Todd Smith, is a prime example of an artist who uses his practice to induce introspection, which manifests materially as abstract paintings. His titles often reflect his accumulation of shared experience and an insight into the immediacy of his process, while the images conjure a methodology for achieving the internal gaze. His most recent project was executed under a set of rigid parameters that maintained a control of scale, considered material applications, and required an immense dedication of time.”

Smith’s solo shows include: Western Exhibitions, Chicago; Luis De Jesus Los, Angeles; Hyde Park Art Center and the Union League Club,Chicago; and Nudashank in Baltimore. Smith's work has been exhibited in group shows at The Indianapolis Art Museum at Newfields, The DePaul Art Museum and Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago; The Illinois State Museum; The Hughes Gallery, Australia; The Green Gallery, Milwaukee; Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles; DCKT, NYC; Circuit 12, Dallas; and Baer Ridgeway Exhibitions, San Francisco. His work is in the collections of The Art Institute Of Chicago, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Soho House Chicago, MINI of Chicago, Hallmark Inc., Fidelity Investments, the Jager Collection in Amsterdam, the South Bend Art Museum in Indiana and Harper College in Illinois and has been written about in The Seen, New American Paintings, Bad at Sports, art ltd, Juxtapoz, Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Magazine, who called him one of the “rising stars we should be collecting now”.