Lionel Smit was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1982. He now lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Primarily a painter and sculptor, his paintings are devoted to the deconstruction of the portrait – thus exposing the construction of the portrayed persona through his techniques. For Smit, identity formation is similar to exposing the anatomy of the canvas – much like tracing the genealogy of the subject over time and space – his focus most often being the Cape Malay woman. Upon close inspection of Smit’s canvas, the viewer loses oneself within the abstracted surface – the viewer only able to decipher bold brush strokes and colours as indicative of an individual artist’s identity. The painting process, evident in Smit’s layering technique, becomes just as important as the subject being explored – the technique itself challenging the way we create an understanding of identity through art, rather than simply describing the subject’s aesthetics. The canvas is thus converted into skin itself – the surface becoming the sight of social ambiguity as the transparent layers signify the various levels inherent in the identification process. More Lionel Smith News here > More about Urban Romantics here > Download PDF >
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