American Archive (Campbell’s Soup)
Details
Edition
Unique
Medium
Oil, Enamel & Screen Print on Vintage Recycled Computer Floppy Disks
Signature
Signed
Unframed Dimensions
33.25 x 25 in
84.46 x 63.5 cm
Year
2023
MORE FROM THIS ARTIST
ABOUT THE ARTIST
From her studio in Indianapolis, Taylor Smith creates vibrant mixed-media works that explore the evolving relationship between technology, popular culture, and consumerism. Drawing on her background in art history and film photography, Smith resurrects materials and imagery that have been discarded or forgotten, breathing new life into them through a practice grounded in curiosity, nostalgia, and cultural critique. Her work centers on what she calls the “reimagined life within everyday things.”
Smith’s artistic roots run deep. Her mother was also an artist herself and attended Andy Warhol’s very first exhibition at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962, weaving Pop Art directly into the family’s creative DNA. Smith later lived and worked in Germany for many years, attending art school in both Nuremberg and Berlin. In one formative moment of her early career, she and a group of fellow students assisted in the base-layer prep and painting of Keith Haring’s iconic 1986 mural on the Berlin Wall, a historic experience that culminated in celebrating with Haring and members of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. These encounters with two of Pop Art’s most influential figures deeply shaped Smith’s ongoing dialogue with 20th-century visual culture.
Today, Smith reinterprets familiar Pop Art imagery through a contemporary lens considering themes of consumerism, nostalgia, environmental decay, and the fleeting nature of technological progress. Her materials are as conceptually rich as her ideas: reclaimed silkscreen frames, discarded analog technologies, luxury packaging, and other remnants of cultural consumption form the physical backdrop for her screens, paintings, and collages. Her surfaces shimmer with bright color, pastels, and a candy-like aesthetic; but beneath the immediate beauty lies a layered excavation of cultural memory, waste, and transformation.
Smith has exhibited internationally throughout Europe and North America, and her work is held in numerous high-profile private and institutional collections. Notable acquisitions include the Eli Lilly permanent collection, the Madeleine Albright collection, and the Cleve Carney Museum of Art, among others.
Smith’s work offers a compelling fusion of Pop Art history, contemporary critique, and innovative materiality. Her vibrant surfaces draw viewers in, while her conceptual depth keeps them engaged, making her pieces both visually striking and intellectually rewarding.
Explore Taylor Smith at DTR Modern Galleries
DTR Modern Galleries holds a collection of works by Taylor Smith works across our contemporary gallery locations in New York, Boston, Palm Beach, and Washington, D.C. For collectors interested in the intersection of nostalgia, cultural commentary, and modern aesthetics, Smith’s work stands out as fresh, relevant, and deeply connected to the legacy of contemporary art.
