The artist Lucien Smith has died at 37, in accordance with ARTnews. His demise was confirmed by his longtime good friend and gallerist Invoice Powers, who instructed the publication, “Lucien lives in a wordless place inside us now.” No reason behind demise was given.
Smith was a fantastic artist, primarily working in portray and sculpture, and a stressed artistic spirit who dabbled in all the things from NFTs to movie and eating places. He was an inescapable presence on the downtown social scene of the previous 15 years. He stayed out late, possessed an impish humorousness, and appeared to know all people. He was additionally deeply considerate, a perceptive analyst of his personal successes and failures, and, lately, dedicated to discovering new methods to help youthful artists.
Smith’s profession took off at a younger age. Whereas nonetheless an undergrad at Cooper Union, he discovered a patron: Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, the curator and collector who runs the blue-chip gallery Salon 94. She purchased a portray from his senior-thesis present in 2011 and have become a supporter. “I didn’t actually come from cash,” Smith instructed the New York Occasions a number of years later. “So I wished my thesis present to seize as a lot consideration as doable. Jeanne, she purchased one of many first work I confirmed.” Smith grew up in Southern California, the kid of a Filipino mom and Black father who bounced round so much. “I’ve needed to transfer to so many alternative faculties due to my dad and mom’ scenario that I used to be thrown into so many alternative identities,” he instructed Workplace Journal. “Going from public college to non-public college, taking part in sports activities, and being extra art-oriented. I’ve at all times been a chameleon.”
In 2012, Powers hosted Smith’s first solo gallery present, “Good Vibrations,” at his house Half Gallery. “It was all appropriated guitar our bodies which Lucien had then was wall sculpture by both portray or adorning them with bottle caps, glitter, tin foil, and many others.,” Powers instructed Workplace in 2018. “Suppose John Armleder meets junkyard Duchamp.” Quickly, Smith had the help of megawatt artwork sellers like David Zwirner and Alberto Mugrabi. Requested in 2013 whom he had his eye on, Mugrabi instructed Artsy, “I shall be watching Lucien Smith as a result of he brings me sunshine within the rain.”
Early in his profession, Smith produced a sequence of works known as the “Rain Work,” through which he used a fireplace extinguisher to create summary fields of paint on massive canvases. Many of those items, which initially bought within the low 5 figures, rapidly ended up on the secondary public sale market, the place their costs climbed as excessive as $389,000. He grew to become a poster boy for a brand new wave of speculative cash washing into the artwork world. He benefited from and wrestled together with his place as a “wunderkind,” because the New York Occasions dubbed him in 2013. In 2014, he purchased a home in Montauk and began spending most of his time there. He studied storm patterns for inspiration. He performed in bands and DJ’d. “I actually wish to keep out of the artwork world proper now,” he instructed the Observer on the time. In 2015, he returned with one other present at Half Gallery. “That is the time in my life after I’m maturing,” he instructed T Journal. “Most of your favourite artists, when you ask them to indicate you’re employed they made after they have been 21, they’d blush. The work I used to be making after I was 21 was promoting for half one million.” He continued, “Work that I used to be making after I was 21 was on the quilt of Sotheby’s catalogues. That pissed lots of people off, however that’s an accomplishment.” He generally ruffled feathers. In 2015, Greenberg Rohatyn and the real-estate developer Keith Rubenstein threw a celebration in a South Bronx warehouse constructing that Smith adorned with sculptures he’d manufactured from bullet-riddled automobiles and burning trash cans, sparking criticism from then–Metropolis Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
Smith’s artistic ambitions typically outstripped the traditions of the artwork world. In 2017, he launched Serving the Folks, a multidisciplinary platform that sought to department out past the gallery system. He wished to “nourish rising expertise in artwork, music, and movie,” he stated in an interview the next 12 months. “Our objective is to supply an alternate platform for artistic inquiry and experimentation. We wish to assist deliver consciousness to the unrefined, uncommercial, and create a marketplace for it as effectively.” Serving the Folks hosted common workshops and dialogue teams for younger creatives. Smith’s community of buddies and collaborators prolonged past the world of blue-chip galleries to incorporate style designers like Tremaine Emory, Heron Preston, and Virgil Abloh, who in 2018 hosted an exhibition of Smith’s work at his Soho flagship Off-White retailer.
In recent times, Smith continued exhibiting a gentle stream of labor. In 2024, I attended a gap of his work at Kapp Kapp gallery known as “A Day Above Floor Is a Good One,” that includes various small sculptures and work; through the opening, Smith sat inside a small canine crate in the midst of the gallery ground, chatting with bemused guests. In 2025, with almost no restaurant expertise, he opened FOOD, an homage to a restaurant of the identical title based within the Seventies by the legendary Soho artist Gordon Matta-Clark with the dancer and photographer Carol Goodden as a canteen for the neighborhood’s artwork scene. Smith wished to supply one thing much like the creatives working in and round Dimes Sq.. “That is my Soho,” Smith instructed this journal, “and I’m very into it.” He was a ubiquitous presence on the restaurant, typically working behind the counter or chatting with an infinite parade of passing buddies all night on the road exterior. The tiny restaurant’s line of stools was typically occupied by Smith’s buddies and friends from the artwork, style, and music scenes. Final week, FOOD up to date its Instagram bio: “closed till additional discover.”
In late August, Smith created a brand new spherical of Rain Work on a baseball area in Montauk. “Life has taken me full circle,” Smith instructed Artnet. “I believe it’s time to return to the method I used to be given.” The work have been created for an upcoming exhibition titled “Delay of Recreation” at Tripoli Gallery, set to open on September 12.
Smith was enthusiastic about revisiting the apply that had put him on the map greater than a decade earlier. “I’m doing one thing. Staging a comeback,” he texted me lately. “Artwork world is zzzzz. I believe it’s time to make a transfer.”
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