“It's like you’ve entered another world, transported through the looking glass, except it was a funhouse mirror and you’ve just joined the circus.”

“There is a visual dissonance in this piece; amongst the pandemonium lies quiet order.”

“Just one insecure species trying to get an A+ at intergalactic show and tell. For as long as we can remember we’ve been left home alone and God we just wish our neighbours would drop by with some food and a hug.”

“Spots signify a pure kind of repulsive nothing [       ]. Possessing a type of purity that cannot be subsumed by any desire.”

“I’m never aware of the full picture, only vague figures, shapes, and colours remain. Countless moments pass by me, blurring and distorting themselves from realistic form.”

“Sometimes I worry that I'm him. But I’m not really. I’ve mastered authenticity. So have you. Well, maybe you don’t like this person because they’re kind of fake. This poser has fooled everyone into thinking they’re genuine. Isn’t that unfair?”

“With each card played, the hands dealt are stained with blood.”

“Exile is ultimately what a gaoler calls freedom, and we are far too often our own prisoners.”

“Last night I occupied the bathroom and its blue fluorescence, soaking it up like a greedy phantom. My reflection taunted me in this harsh light.”

“With our fingers progressively morphing into letter keys with every digital exchange encountered, there is also an opportunity and a drive to ‘opt out’, play, and discover new ways of approaching traditional formal constructs of design.”

“To situate myself within the vast, exhilarating, and exotic waves of this grand tourist city was to engage in a mercurial pursuit — a perilous, ambiguous dance.”

What makes a space?

“Just like anyone else with a Pinterest board dedicated to vintage furniture, Levy’s mental exercise resonated with me. But I am an inheritor of a different world.”

“I chose to replicate AI generated images because I wanted a translation of the human spirit to crack through the endless multitudes of soulless images online in the most ridiculous way possible.”

“Sometimes I wish I had a million followers. I want people to listen to the songs I post. To think about the lyrics and how they might relate to me. Relate to me!!! So I can figure out who I am.”

Boiler Room was last weekend’s confused lover, trying its best to be intimate, but couldn’t do the work to make it so (even though you both really wanted it to).

Both eerie and peaceful, the final room is shrouded in a velvety green amongst which his final paintings whisper rumours of Magritte's transformation. At this point, one cannot help but think back to the self-portrait that greeted them, now at odds with the viscerality of The happy donor and Man and the forest. 

As she transforms her home into a marketable domain, Smith transcends the traditional role of homemaker to establish herself as a personal brand. The nails, the couture, the gentle speaking voice? Each of these elements are curated and deployed by Smith in her content to appeal to her audience and indicate her marketability to brands – and it’s working.

As soon as you enter the space, you find that the dialectic of light and darkness is already at play. Then begins the piano, and notes that echo cavernously, consuming the space. In a haunting, projecting boom, Alice Smith begins vocalizing the words, “once again…”

A tortured artist. A naive assistant. The child always kills the father. Pop art will kill abstract expressionism. It’s the 50s. 

“Even this eternity will meet its end, and the world shall wait  For another, and another, and another. The end is forever.”