VOLTA New York

Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to present a solo booth dedicated to the work of Ray Smith.

VOLTA NY is an invitational curated show by the directorial team of art critic/curators Amanda Coulson (Executive Director) and Christian Viveros-Fauné (Curatorial Advisor). By putting the focus back on artists through exclusively featuring solo projects, VOLTA NY promotes a deep exploration of the work of its selected artists and galleries, an opportunity for discoveries that move beyond those afforded by a traditional art fair.  

Ray Smith was born in Brownsville, TX in 1959. Smith emerged in the 1980s, and continues to produce exuberant paintings and sculptures characterized by an inimitable style and subject matter that reflect his bicultural American and Mexican heritage. Contorted and morphed figures recur throughout his work, in a hybrid that draws from his early studies of fresco painting with traditional practitioners in Mexico, and an indebtedness to Picasso, the Surrealists, and the politically daring Mexican muralists. Smith’s work is characterized by a unique kind of magical realism. He bends, twists, and transplants, creating illogical scenarios that are full of surprises and special effects. The artist often uses dogs and animals as anthropomorphic beings. “They are an entity of the human figure,” says Smith. “They are beasts, but they are directly attached to a blueprint of our own existence.” Through these varied beings, Smith reflects upon the complexities and absurdities of society, family, politics, culture, war, and the human condition itself, framed by birth and death.

This year's show, entitled Age of Anxiety, will focus on areas currently underexposed by the art world (Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America), while also identifying trends that point towards newly critical aspects of emerging art. The show’s title—taken from W.H. Auden’s 1948 poem of the same name—suggests reexamination as well as novel imaginative departures that herald new beginnings. 

view exhibition on artsy