Dave Smith | Sundowner (2000)
Acrylic on canvas and vintage fabric | 48 × 48 inches
In Sundowner, Dave Smith utilizes a meticulous, multi-stage process to explore the physical and cultural layering of the American West, transforming mundane domestic artifacts into sites of historical inquiry. The work is a diptych of two joined panels that physically embody the collision of history and artifice, challenging the viewer to reconcile the "soft" nostalgia of childhood with the "hard" reality of territorial expansion. The upper section consists of heavy vintage curtain fabric originally intended for a child’s bedroom, while the lower section is a traditional stretched canvas, creating a structural tension between the domestic interior and the vast exterior landscape. Smith’s practice begins with a physical collage, an iterative assembly where he refines the spatial configuration of found imagery before translating the composition into a high-fidelity finished work. By meticulously painting out the original cowboy figures from the fabric’s pattern, Smith leaves behind a repeating motif of a Native American tribal leader with a ceremonial pipe, forcing a confrontation with how indigenous identities have been systematically relegated to background decor and "playtime" archetypes within the American home.
The upper panel features a cartoonishly colored Grand Canyon, rendered in high-key yellows and pinks that evoke the saturated palettes of mid-century tourism postcards. Hovering over this vista is a surreal interior showroom of ceiling fixtures and table lamps harvested from home decor catalogs. This juxtaposition suggests an "indoor-ification" of the West, where the vast, sacred landscape is reduced to a backdrop for suburban interior design. The lamps illuminate nothing but the manufactured myth, highlighting the bizarre commercialization of the American "frontier" as a product to be purchased and installed in the home.
The lower canvas offers a stark, formal departure, featuring a rhythmic pattern of rectangles that suggests the silhouette of a roadside diner or motel sign. By removing the commercial lettering, Smith shifts the viewer’s focus to pure shape and color, invoking a formalist aesthetic. This abstraction strips the sign of its function, leaving only the ghost of a mid-century structure—a relic of the roadside culture that facilitated the suburban migration into the desert.
Sundowner is a quintessential example of Neo-Pop Surrealism that dialogues deeply with the appropriation art of the Pictures Generation. By utilizing found, mass-produced fabric, Smith follows in the footsteps of artists like Sigmar Polke, who used printed textiles to subvert the "seriousness" of painting. The flat, graphic treatment of the lower panel’s boxes invokes the hard-edge abstraction of Ellsworth Kelly, yet here, the minimalism is anchored in the vernacular of the American highway. Smith’s treatment of the indigenous figures—rendered as sterile, repeating patterns—further echoes the conceptual spirit of John Baldessari, where the act of "painting out" specific information serves to highlight the political and historical absences within the frame.
Curatorial Recommendation: This diptych is a seminal work for collectors interested in the physical manipulation of media and the socio-political history of American design. Its unique construction, blending vintage textile with traditional canvas, makes it a rare textural highlight in the artist's early 2000s oeuvre. It is an essential acquisition for a collection focused on the intersection of Americana, Indigenous representation, and mid-century modernism.