ARMIN MÜHSAM AND DEBRA M. SMITH

November 2021 - April 2022

STAGED PRESENCE

Armin Mühsam and Debra M. Smith

Anteroom Corsicana | November 2021 - April 2022

Essay by Lillian Michel

Anteroom faces approximately west. The window-front gallery is shaded by an awning and a pair of tall trees. In the morning, the work of Armin Mühsam and Debra M. Smith, two former residents of the 100 West - Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, is illuminated only by the cool, soft, natural light that indirectly reaches inside.

Before noon, the harshest shadows in the room are in Mühsam’s paintings. Prior to his 2017 residency in Corsicana, Mühsam painted landscapes. Searching for a new language of shape and color, he began an intensive exploration of collage that was translated in Texas to painting and, eventually, evolved into a new geometric vocabulary. The essence of collage is innate to Mühsam’s practice now. All his work originates in something found — the colors of print advertisements, the pattern inside a security envelope, the shapes of shadows. His recent paintings are based in realistic settings, but contain geometric shapes of varying colors, forms, and patterns that create optical illusions. First you assume they represent non-objective paintings and sculptures, then you realize some might be independent shapes imposed over the underlying composition, and finally you accept that really every element of the painting is fundamentally a shape defined by its relationship to all the other elements. He employs a similar strategy in his sculptures, assembling found objects — often pieces of discarded wood salvaged from construction sites — together in a way that transforms the disparate elements into a composition that is simultaneously abstract and evocative.

Smith has a painter’s sensitivity to shape and color, and a quilter’s intuition for balance and composition, although she can’t be defined as one or the other. Her works are pieced together from deconstructed vintage textiles, especially the translucent cream and acidic red linings of vintage kimono. Her collection of vintage fabrics, assembled over three decades, provides endless possibilities for combination. Smith's work is totally abstract, geometric, and linear, without obscuring its origins. If Mühsam’s work exercises the viewer’s sense of sight, Smith’s work activates their sense of touch. The slightly crooked lines, gentle wrinkles, tones subtly varied by wear and time, folds and seams, and inherent presence of the original weaver’s hand all give the work what Smith calls a “vibration” that resonates for a viewer. As a 2020 resident, Smith created a large-scale installation of dozens of colorful, graphically-patterned fabrics and segments of works in progress. The installation provided a sense of the intuitive process that Smith follows. Beginning from visually rich source materials, she searches for stimulating arrangements of color and pattern, building up, sewing, putting away, adjusting, and arriving at compositions that are balanced and refined.

Both based in Kansas City, Missouri, Mühsam and Smith both occupied 100 West’s third-floor studio. If those two coincidences were enough reason for this two-person exhibition — their first together — then their shared interests in geometric abstraction, found sources, and reconstruction are serendipitous revelations.

After noon, as the sun descends, sunlight penetrates the gallery. Dark gray shadows are cast by the window mullions, the door frame, the sculpture, the pedestal, the tree trunks, and the leaves, all shifting as sunset approaches. A person, their eyes tuned after viewing Mühsam’s and Smith’s works, might find a new appreciation for the lines, planes, and shapes appearing in the room, given temporary presence by light and shadow.

*Sculpture*, pine, paint, 10 x 19.5 x 15” - Armin Mühsam

*Dialectical Presence,* Oil on Canvas, 20 x 20” - Armin Mühsam

*Silence is Unclear 1,* pieced vintage silk, 45 x 52.5”, 2015 - Debra Smith

*Sylvan Arrangement ,* Oil on Canvas, 36 x 36” - Armin Mühsam

Armin Mühsam graduated with a BFA from the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, Germany (1994) and with an MFA from Montana State University in Bozeman (1997). Since 2000, he has been teaching at Northwest Missouri State University, in Maryville, MO, where he is currently Professor of Painting. Mühsam is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and has been the subject of over fifty solo exhibition in the United States, Germany, France, Romania, and Hungary. His work has been reviewed and featured in Art Papers and New American Painting. Mühsam lives and maintains a studio in Kansas City; he is represented by Haw Contemporary, Kansas City, MO.

Armin Mühsam as a resident of the 100 West 3rd Floor Studio, 2017

Debra M. Smith studied at the Italian Academy of Fashion & Design; Lorenzo de Medici in Florence Italy before receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute with a major in Fiber in 1993 and an Associate Degree in Applied Science from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2002. Breaking all stereotypes associated with textiles, from ideas of craft to that of “women’s work,” Smith’s pieced images have a strong language that is much more similar to that of painting. Smith lives and maintains a studio in Kansas City; she is represented by Haw Contemporary, Kansas City, MO.

*Looking to the Left, Revisited, #1,* Pieced vintage silk, 26.5 x 16.5 x .25” - Debra M. Smith

100 West Resident artist alumni Armin Mühsam and Debra M. Smith returned to Corsicana with work from their Kansas City studios, installed in this two-person exhibition in Anteroom. This installation presents two oil paintings on canvas and architectural models by Armin, and two works of pieced vintage silk by Debra. Both Armin and Debra were residents of the 100 West 3rd floor studio in 2017 and 2019, respectively, while in downtown Kansas City they can spot each other’s studio from across the train tracks.