​ARTIST BIO​

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Joseph Smolin is a painter and multimedia artist based in Greenville, SC. He has shown work in numerous spaces including Echo Contemporary in Atlanta, ICOSA in Austin, and Satellite Art Fair in NYC. He is a member of the national artist-run collective Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and was the recipient of the 2024 South Carolina Arts Commission's Emerging Artist Grant.

 

Smolin is a prolific artist, teacher, and curator. He co-founded and contributes to the nonprofit art magazine Rattlesnake, which aims to highlight a diverse set of emerging artists in the South. His duo show with Virginia Russo, Invisible Planet, was created for the main gallery at the Greenville Center for Creative Arts. He also worked with Griffin Cordell to create NO SLEEP THEME PARK, an interactive and immersive art exhibition that debuted in the Metropolitan Arts Council Gallery, before moving to Browsing Room Gallery in Nashville, TN. His solo show, SINKHOLE, SC, recently opened at Good Art Co. and reflected on gentrification and climate disaster in the South. 

 

Smolin was born in Birmingham, AL and received a BA in Industrial Design from Auburn University. He has lived in South Carolina since 2018.

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You can find my CV here.

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You can contact me here.

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ARTIST STATEMENT​

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I draw from folk art and religious iconography to create distortions of the familiar, especially around the archetypal angel, both biblical and as a fixture in pop-culture. My work investigates and challenges traditional gender roles and rigid dogma through reimagined dream-mythology. I seek to deconstruct and reveal the mania and destruction underneath patriarchal masculinity, denying fatalism and pretense and replacing it with my own symbology of provocation and hope.

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