Front Room Gallery is pleased to present Patricia Smith’s new solo exhibition, City of One. This new group of thematically related works on paper addresses the anxieties of contemporary life and the coping mechanisms that develop in the collective psyche.

Making use of Rococo-like ornamentation characterized by lightness and delicacy, Smith creates fantastical structures that resemble both microorganisms and planetary surfaces. These structures house imaginary organizations described through captions that label rooms and spaces. The words serve as clues to the meaning of these elaborate systems.

The obscure entity that Smith is referencing is the soft, porous terrain of all that is submerged in human consciousness. Within these miniature geographies, issues of violence, abuse of power, and self-imposed retreat into oblivion are presented. In these drawings, the rational side of the human being is made to confront the irrational, distorted aspects of identity, ego and desire. In the end, the diagrams can never say what they actually mean; the words serve as directional signs in a field of uncertain symptoms.

Patricia Smith’s technique is obsessive and labor-intensive. The exhibition features a nine-foot-long drawing that took several months to complete, along with eight other works. This is Smith’s second show at Front Room.