Review

"Stead's", Oil on Board.

Seth Smith
New Works

5-9 p.m.
(Opening Reception)

The Rice Gallery of Fine Art
11535 Ash St.
Leawood, KS
913.685.8889

Hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday
Runs through: Oct. 15

Artist's site: http://www.sethsmithstudio.com
Gallery site: http://www.thericegallery.com

Seth Smith bills himself as an abstract artist -- and, to be fair, a lot of his work in tonight's opening at the Rice Gallery of Fine Art fits that description perfectly.

The thing is, though, that some of Smith's most affecting new pieces contain concrete imagery (and iconic imagery at that) placed into unreal settings.

Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time in Kansas City will recognize Winstead's, the subject of today's featured piece, the oil-on-board Steads. Smith has yanked the drive-in out of its normal surroundings and placed it in an open space where clouds that look like potatoes hover overhead. (Yes, Winstead's is a chain, so its normal surroundings will vary. None of those environs look like this, though.)

He gives the same treatment to another beloved local institution, Town Topic, and to various other Midwestern establishments. In each case, the painting takes on the feel of a dream -- one in which the familiarity of the known only increases the strangeness of its surroundings.

Smith's artist's statement does much the same thing. He takes recognizable places and images -- among them DINERS, TRAiNS and FERRIS WHEELS ON FIRE -- and scrawls them in the skyspace of a photograph of a motel awning. It's cryptic ... but that makes it a perfect explanation for Smith's work.

If your taste runs away from brick and mortar, Smith offers something softer -- which, while largely abstract in nature, still retain recognizable imagery (or at the very least, suggest it). Many of those paintings recall clouds -- both the sort you find in the sky and the kind you see through telescopes in deep space.

So, perhaps, Smith's work is less abstract than abstracting ... with the power to pull the viewer into his dreamscapes for a few hours of pleasurable wandering. And if all the road food in his works makes you hungry -- well, the hamburger joints stay open late on Friday night.