Kansas Smeaton: Heavy Lightness and Sweet Sorrow
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COMA is pleased to present a solo exhibition, titled Heavy Lightness and Sweet Sorrow, by Sydney-based artist Kansas Smeaton (b. 1992), on view 12 January – 10 February, 2024 in the Darlinghurst Gallery. This is the artist’s second solo presentation with COMA.
Throughout Heavy Lightness and Sweet Sorrow there is an air of blissful folly, a degree of frivolity that echoes across the paintings. Smeaton’s subjects are surrounded by an abundance of foliage and produce, they engage in tender and authentic embraces and are cast in a lightness that celebrates all the entrapments of pure and true love. The paintings often reference the principal tenets of the Rococo; lustrous depictions of nature and a hope for unrestrained living, ease of existence and a shying away from responsibilities while enjoying courting rituals and light-hearted entertainment.
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Kansas Smeaton
The lovers hours end too soon, 2023
oil on canvas
167.5 x 198 cm / 66 x 78 inchesContinuing her consideration of the visual and aesthetic rhetoric of 18th century French portraiture, Heavy Lightness and Sweet Sorrow is Kansas Smeaton’s foray into the many faces of intimacy, from the first seeds of courtship and lust to protracted longing and all-encompassing romance.
An overflowing fruit bowl, the pinch of a cherry or a bunch of grapes placed tenderly in the lap of a woman, the recurring motif of fruit throughout the exhibition plays with the symbolism of 18th century portraiture. Consumption, delight, and summer merrymaking abound. The inclusion and focus on fruit in Smeaton’s work simultaneously acknowledges the tension of knowing that the fruit will eventually decay, the sun will set, and the brilliance of the day will undoubtedly fade.
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Kansas Smeaton
Are they thinking about the grape?, 2023
oil on canvas
56 x 51 cm / 22 x 20 1/8 inches -
Artworks
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Installation Views
