"Thin Ice" Solo Exhibition by Joseph Smolinski at Real Art Ways

Press release

Thin Ice

Solo Exhibition by Joseph Smolinski

at Real Art Ways

Thin Ice, 2020. Digital animation, 6 min. 31 sec.

HARTFORD, CONN. Real Art Ways will open a solo exhibition by Joseph Smolinski on Thursday, February 20, at 6:00 pm, during CCH (Creative Cocktail Hour). Gallery hours are every day from 1-9 pm. Admission is free. Real Art Ways is at 56 Arbor Street in Hartford.

Thin Ice is an animation project that draws from formulaic American truck commercials and the artist's memories of growing up in Minnesota. Each year, during spring, the nightly news would report on the latest automobile stranded and sinking through the thinning ice of area lakes. Fueled by automotive fetishism and masculine folly, this moving image is a striking metaphor for the state of the environment.

From the artist:

"I was born in the 1970s, shortly after the oil embargo that brought our country to a halt. The period between 1975-1980 was a missed opportunity to learn from our unsustainable addiction to fossil fuels and embrace innovative new green technologies. In hindsight, this inaction has set us on a course of grave danger, all while marketing campaigns from corporate entities steered popular

culture away from the environmental movement of the time.

I distinctly remember watching 80s automotive commercials from Ford, Dodge, and Chevrolet of rugged trucks ripping through the landscape and performing off-road feats in slow motion. Phrases like “Built Ford Tough” and “Like a Rock'' were designed to perpetuate toxic masculinity with little regard for sustainability. These tropes come from a long line of colonial views of the

environment in which a landscape must be tamed and conquered."

Thin Ice was curated by David Borawski.

About the Artist

Joseph Smolinski is a multidisciplinary artist and educator in New Haven. His practice questions the shifting roles of technology within communication networks, energy and oil companies, and the industrial agricultural infrastructure, which indelibly shape the so-called natural environment.

Smolinski received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin and his MFA from the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Group exhibition venues include Diverse Works, Houston, TX; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown, OH; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. Solo exhibitions include Mixed Greens Gallery, NY; Swarm Gallery, Oakland, CA; Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT; and ArtSpace, New Haven, CT.

He is a recipient of the Connecticut Commission of the Arts 2012 Artist Fellowship, the 2014 Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the College of the Environment at Wesleyan University, and a 2012 Artist Resource Trust Grant from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.

He has been an artist in residence at Wassaic Projects, Yale University Art Gallery Happy and Bob Doran Connecticut AIR Program, and the Vermont Studio Center.