Smith-Stewart is pleased to present A VERY REAL AND VERY DARK TIME, the US solo debut of New York artist BRIAN LUND. The exhibition features ten new graphite and color pencil works on paper that range in scale.

Lund’s pencil drawings feature a self-invented visual vocabulary, consisting of a complex system of dots, dashes, lines, and numbers, among other notations, that translate the vast editing systems of Hollywood films into abstract compositions.

In the past, the subjects of his work have included major blockbusters like “Rambo” and “Diehard” and infamous flops like “Gigli” and “Showgirls”. The show at Smith-Stewart features ten drawings, all-focusing on several films of the late American choreographer and director Robert Louis “Bob” Fosse – Sweet Charity (1969), Cabaret (1972), Lenny (1974), All That Jazz (1979) and Star 80 (1983).

Why Fosse? For one, Lund finds a great deal of joy and pleasure in many of the film’s dance numbers and musical sequences. Also, Fosse explored a number of dark themes like obsessive behaviorism, the mechanics of an entertainment-based industry, social and cultural taboos, and personal tendencies toward self-destruction. Finally, a common thread in Fosse’s films is the stage and what happens behind it. His films travel back and forth in time, featuring many edits and perspectives and not one ends on a happy note.

Lund’s practice allows him to envision motion pictures as integrated sets of sequentially based marks, mimicking the procedures involved in editing film. This synthesis of a highly involved drawing practice with cinematic exploration allows Lund to better recognize the portrayal of problematic conflicts, behaviors and situations inherent in the film sources themselves. Lund’s drawings function as dynamic places in which to examine the variety of ways in which particular social and cultural issues of our time are distributed to a contemporary audience.