Geoffrey Todd Smith
Daydream Ratio

September 28, 2024 - November 3, 2024

Geoffrey Todd Smith’s exhibition, DAYDREAM RATIO, consists of a group of system- based paintings that balance the whimsical creative tendencies of exploration and imagination with a quantifiable sense of order and discipline. Each image conveys a primitive technological atmosphere, resembling aspects of early video games, basic cut-and-paste technology, and low-resolution video surveillance monitors. Where previous generations of abstract painters searched for the sublime through energetic flourishes of individuality at grand scale, Smith embraces the constraints of a nostalgic visual language of washed-up machines on an intimate scale, somewhere between hand-held devices and laptop computers. Although the paintings are abstract, the title of each work operates alongside the image to offer some insight into the artist’s mindset, sense of humor, and concerns, while still allowing each viewer a personal interpretation.

Geoffrey Todd Smith’s work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Hallmark Inc., Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, the Jager Collection in Amsterdam, Soho House Chicago, the South Bend Art Museum in Indiana, and the U.S. State Department and has been exhibited at Newfields: The Indianapolis Museum of Art, Luis de Jesus Gallery and Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles; Hyde Park Art Center, DePaul Art Museum and Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago; The Hughes Gallery in Australia; The Green Gallery in Milwaukee; The Front in New Orleans; Illinois State Museum, and the Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois. He has been featured in The New Criterion, New American Paintings, Bad at Sports, art ltd, Juxtapoz, Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Magazine, among others. Smith is represented by Western Exhibitions, and he lives and works in Chicago.