Smutz hopes his paintings provoke thought
June 21, 2009
At a show hosted by the art group Untitled last year, Donny Smutz hung a painting that depicted, among other things, a cord connecting a giraffe and a nun in a sensitive area. Smutz's surrealist paintings have caused stirs before, but on this particular night, someone reacted to the art by slashing it with a box cutter.
Smutz's centerpiece at his new show at Tinney Contemporary, a painting titled .gov,portrays a gaunt Barack Obama nailed to a cross, flanked by a microphone-wielding Oprah and Ronald McDonald with a Big Mac on a stick. At the show's opening, Smutz figured it would be a good idea to hire a security guard, but he'd rather not draw attention to that.
"By no means am I going out just to find the latest and coolest thing to paint about and get people fired up about it," he said.
What he's after, he says, is to create topical paintings that provoke discoveries about destructive tendencies hidden in our lifestyles, like our dependence on oil or the excessive use of chemicals in food production.
In .gov, Smutz sought to expose what he sees as the naïve hope many have placed in President Obama to cure the world's ills, while at the same time jabbing at the sheep mentality of the book-reading public toward Oprah, and many Americans' get-it-fast, get-it-cheap approach to food. The painting isn't easy going down, but Smutz is hoping viewers have an opinion about it one way or the other.
"Being an artist, you want to be in a world where you're connecting with an audience," he said. "You're hitting on a lot of issues a lot of people have something to say about, and that's a great thing. You would hope and want people to show up at your show to have something to say or feel."
Smutz's show, Out Of My Mind, continues through July 11 at Tinney Contemporary, 237 Fifth Ave. N., 255-7816, . Gallery hours are 10 a.m,-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Visit www.tinneycontemporary.com for more information.
— WILL AYERS, THE TENNESSEAN
June 2009, Nashville, TN