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.
Continuing 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.
In Much Love, Many Loves, two female sitters hold onto each other longingly, their lips mere moments from softly touching, what happens next for the viewer to speculate – like any great romantic drama the audience is left holding their breath. The lightness of the image is counterbalanced as the two women are physically bound together by a metal chain wrapped around one sitter’s arm creating an air of mystery around their coupling that is overtly contemporary.
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.
This undercurrent of loss is particularly prominent in The Lovers Hours End Too Soon, in which two women lounge against a sumptuous and lavishly appointed backdrop, as dense luminous fabrics surround and cushion them and forest inhabitants, small bunnies, play by their side. In this painting the artist pulls the fabric aside to reveal a thinning and darkening landscape – lonely and sparse. It is as if Smeaton has pulled away the curtain to reveal what lays beneath the grand façade, the Rococo idea of love was a dream, simply a flight from the real.
In some of the artworks the subjects retain power when they welcome the gaze. In the painting Himeros’ Dream however, the lone figure stares beyond the canvas longingly, her plaited hair adorned with dainty white bows gives her a sense of childlike innocence and conventional purity – the power lies not with the desirer but with the desired who is not pictured and only vaguely mentioned through the artworks title, referencing Himeros the Greek god of sexual desire and unrequited love. The woman is merely an observer of her own fantasy, she is engaged in a never-ending chase, isolated and at the mercy of her pursuits – the playfulness and light frivolity of the Rococo as a sentiment becomes a carefully constructed prison of yearning and pining.
Unlike literature, with resolution and finality, Smeaton is painting singular moments open to interpretation. Akin to love and intimacy in life itself the outcome is in flux yet the constant reminder of the two-faced nature of desire is continually present. Heavy Lightness and Sweet Sorrow draws a curtain across the stage, reminding us that alongside great loves are great sorrows, each as animated and effervescent as the other.
