Artist Lucien Smith, the downtown darling whose meteoric rise helped outline the New York artwork scene of the early 2010s, has died at age 37.
Invoice Powers, whose Half Gallery introduced Smith’s first solo exhibition, “Good Vibrations,” in 2012, remembers the artist as an essential determine whose affect will endure.
“When folks bear in mind modern artwork from the early teenagers of this century, it is going to be not possible to not embrace the work of Lucien Smith in that dialog,” Powers instructed Web page Six.
“I’ll consider him each time it rains, and in addition on sunny days,” he mentioned. “Our ideas now go to his mom and his little brother. Lucien had purchased a home in Montauk the place all of them lived. His household was essential to him.”
The reason for loss of life has not been launched.
The proprietor of the Tripoli Gallery – the place Smith was because of open an exhibition this week – can also be mourning the loss.
“All my love goes out to Lucien, his mom Vivian and everybody he holds pricey,” Tripoli Patterson instructed Web page Six. “He’s a shining star who will proceed to shine in his new type and thru all of the paintings he shared with us. As we mourn his too-soon departure, I discover the energy to stay true to the duty he gave me: to exhibit his work and full his imaginative and prescient of ‘Delay of Sport’ with the exhibition of his last gesture of 4 work within the rain made on the deserted baseball subject at Camp Hero, Montauk, NY.”
We’re instructed the exhibition is delayed because the gallery is “discussing and dealing on future exhibition dates along with his household.”
Smith turned identified for his “Rain Work”, made by spraying paint with a fireplace extinguisher onto a canvas.
After graduating from Cooper Union in 2011, he shortly turned a fixture within the Decrease Manhattan artwork world and was hailed as a “little one prodigy” by The New York Instances’ T Journal in 2013. “He is solely 24, however Lucien Smith has arrived,” they wrote.
He was named to Forbes’ 30 Underneath 30 listing in 2013 and 2014.
In 2014, one in all his work offered at public sale at Sotheby’s for $372,000. By the age of 25, he had raked in thousands and thousands in gross sales.
In 2015, the New York Instances reported that whereas Smith and different contemporaries had been promoting works “at public sale for eye-watering costs in comparison with the artists’ unique gallery costs,” issues had calmed down. “This unstable sector of the market, the place insiders regularly scour Fb and Instagram for the subsequent Damien Hirst, has undergone a correction,” he reviews.
In accordance with his personal web site, “After what appeared like in a single day success, Smith struggled with a number of the pitfalls of gaining notoriety so early. »
Smith moved to Montauk, telling Ssense, “I subscribed to this concept of what a New York artist was that was actually pretentious and unhealthy. After the primary 4 years of exhibiting, it turned apparent to me. I am not fascinated about being a New York artwork star. I am not fascinated about being a Sprint Snow or a Dan Colen. All of it obtained to some extent the place I could not take it anymore.”
He then turned to serving to different younger artists. In 2015, he created the nonprofit Serving the Individuals, describing it as “a gaggle that seeks to nurture rising expertise within the fields of artwork, music and movie.”
“Our goal is to offer another platform for inventive analysis and experimentation. We wish to assist increase consciousness of what’s unrefined and uncommercial and in addition create a marketplace for it,” he mentioned.
In 2025, he reopened Meals, which had been opened in 1971 by artists Tina Girouard, Carol Goodden and Gordon Matta-Clark.
Smith gave the impression to be making ready for a return to the artwork world, creating 4 new Rain Work for the exhibition on the Tripoli Gallery which opens this week, September 12, and continues all through the month.
“Life has introduced me full circle,” Smith instructed Artnet. “I feel it’s time to return to the method that was put earlier than me.”
Artist Andrew Kuo tweeted Tuesday: “Lucien Smith was our pal and his loss of life is tragic. It is a loss to our neighborhood. Rattling. Relaxation in peace, Lucien.”