SMU MEADOWS 50TH ANNIVERSARY: OLIVIA SMITH ’11 – NYC GALLERY DIRECTOR FOCUSES ON COLLABORATION

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Published on blog.smu.edu/meadows50; October 2, 2019 by Jennifer Smart

Being the daughter of a faculty member, Olivia Smith always figured she would end up at SMU.

“I grew up going to concerts in Caruth Auditorium; it was always part of the plan,” she says. Smith, who graduated from Meadows in 2011 with a B.F.A. in studio art and minors in art history and English, is the daughter of Professor Carol Leone, chair of piano studies in the Meadows Division of Music. Although Smith trained for much of her early life as a dancer, an injury prevented her from studying dance at the university level. Instead she turned her creative energies toward the visual arts and poetry, often combining them in the same work.

This interdisciplinary tendency led to art pieces that often consisted of collaboration with students from across Meadows on performances, installations and exhibitions. When Smith wasn’t installing art or developing her poetry with Jack Myers, the late director of creative writing in SMU’s Dedman College, she was volunteering with Big Thought and the Dallas Independent School District teaching art to students in need, serving as a docent for the art collection at the Rachofsky House, and studying abroad in Taos, Bali and France.

After graduation she honed her ability to speak about art by leading tours at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, an experience that confirmed her interest in nonprofit or education work related to contemporary art. She landed coveted internships with Artists Space and Creative Time after moving to New York in 2012 while continuing to make her own work and engage with other artists.

“As an artist I had always been more interested in collaborating with other people,” she says. “I launched a lecture series my senior year in which I invited faculty and students to give presentations about their work. After moving to New York, I started to realize I was more interested in the positioning of other artists’ work through curating than spending isolated hours in my own studio.”

After several years directing Exhibition A, an online platform for art prints and editions, Smith was invited to curate her first gallery show in New York.

The invitation quickly led to another, and at the end of 2015 she was approached by Chris Dorland and David Deutsch, two New York City-based artists who were interested in working with Smith to open a contemporary art gallery. “None of us really knew what that would fully encompass,” she says with a laugh. “We believed that because we were artists we could bring something unique to the commercial art landscape.”

The three opened their new space, Magenta Plains, in New York’s Lower East Side in 2016 and staged solo exhibitions of historical works by William Wegman, conceptual German artist Georg Herold, and computer art pioneer Lillian Schwartz—the first-ever New York gallery show for the 89-year-old legend. “Our program at the gallery reflects our commitment to offering support to established, under-recognized, and emerging artists, fostering an intergenerational context,” says Smith, who serves as Magenta Plains’ director.

Since then, Magenta Plains has released an impressive artist roster, received critical attention for dozens of solo and group exhibitions, and travelled to art fairs throughout the country as well as in Dallas. This year the Dallas Museum of Art acquired a painting for its permanent collection by Don Dudley, an 89-year-old minimalist painter Smith represents. “It was an exciting, full-circle moment,” she says. “The DMA is where I first experienced contemporary art.” Magenta Plains and Don Dudley have donated a painting to TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art, an annual contemporary art auction on October 26th benefiting the Dallas Museum of Art and amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research.

Smith also curated Elizabeth Moran: Against the Best Possible Sources, an exhibition about the history of fact-checking, for the Hawn Gallery in the Hamon Arts Library, on view through December 20, 2019.

Read more about the Elizabeth Moran exhibition and about Magenta Plains.

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS: DALLAS ART FAIR'S 11TH EDITION SHOWCASES JAPANESE ARTISTS, NEW YORK NAMES AND FAMILIAR TEXANS

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Published on www.dallasnews.com; Apr 8, 2019 by Michael Granberry

Another familiar face will be former Dallasite Olivia Smith, whose important New York gallery Magenta Plains will make its second Art Fair showing this year. Smith says she is bringing two artists with "50 years between them" in the form of 88-year-old Don Dudley and 31-year-old emerging artist Anne Libby. Both artists are from Los Angeles, Smith says via email, and share a sensibility "that harkens to mid-20th-century Abstraction and a material dexterity reflective of their respective generations."

Olivia Smith, director of Magenta Plains gallery in New York City, is a former Dallasite who will mark her second year at Dallas Art Fair. (Nan Coulter / Special Contributor)

PAPERCITY MAGAZINE: LOOKING BACK AT THE DALLAS ART FAIR — THE FIRST-TIMERS TELL ALL RECORD NUMBER OF VISITORS IN YEAR 10 AND MORE TO COME

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Published on www.papercitymag.com; May 7, 2018 by Catherine D. Anspon

"A Homecoming"

Meanwhile, another narrative signaled a homecoming. SMU grad Olivia Smith — director of NYC-based, first-time exhibitor Magenta Plains — paired inter-generational talents Zach Bruder and Bill Saylor, both of whom found favor with collectors.

A good dilemma to have, as reported by Artnews, was running out of paintings by Bruder. Smith, nimble on her feet, enlisted FedEx. Read the anecdote, and what the authoritative mag thought of Year Ten, here.

PaperCity caught up with Smith back in Manhattan, amidst the fever of Frieze week, where Magenta is also exhibiting. The 30-year-old dealer shared impressions of her first year as DAF exhibitor: “Being a native Dallasite, it only made sense to bring Magenta Plains to the fair in my hometown. Reconnecting with the Dallas art scene, its institutions, and its supporters was particularly special for me, as I am a product of growing up within the city’s schools and museums.”

“IT’S AMAZING TO SEE HOW THE DALLAS ART SCENE HAS EXPLODED IN THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS— THERE ARE MANY FACETS TO EXPLORE, FROM DIY ART SPACES TO PRIVATE COLLECTIONS.”

Smith says, “The paintings in our booth by Bill Saylor and Zach Bruder were incredibly well received and we were very happy to forge new relationships which we feel are lasting. My peers and colleagues visiting from New York felt welcomed by the hospitality Dallas showed and in general sales were strong throughout. Many fellow exhibitors mentioned returning to the fair next year.”

And there was an after-hours happening involved too, which added a touch of community to the exhibitor experience for Magenta Plains and friends. The Dallas native curated a chic cocktail affair at her family’s Highland Park casa, with a little help from fellow art dealers. Smith says, “The highlight of my week was hosting a collector soirée at my childhood home on Saturday night to celebrate the fair with friends Half Gallery, Lyles & King, Night Gallery, and Canada.

“We staged some artwork alongside my family’s personal collection as an extension of the Dallas Art Fair like a one night pop-up. It was fantastic seeing the paintings installed in a very livable, domestic setting. The night ended in impromptu piano performances by hosts and guests alike — truly a night to remember!”

CULTURED MAG: MAGENTA PLAINS, A GALLERY RUN BY ARTISTS, CELEBRATE ITS 2ND ANNIVERSARY

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Published on www.culturedmag.com; March 8, 2018 by Emily Gallagher 

OLIVIA SMITH, CHRIS DORLAND AND DAVID DEUTSCH OF MAGENTA PLAINS.

“I like to joke that I was his favorite studio assistant,” says Chris Dorland. “But David has never confirmed it.” Dorland speaks of former boss and current co-director, veteran painter David Deutsch. The two working artists, who together with their collaborator Olivia Smith, form the intergenerational trio that run the Lower East Side gallery, Magenta Plains.

Celebrating its second anniversary this March, the Allen Street gallery has reached a point of transition, taking its programming from a project-based space, to releasing its roster of represented artists publicly for the first time this month.

Magenta Plains may have been the brainchild of Deutsch, a Los Angeles born painter, but Deutsch always intended the gallery to be a collaborative effort. In late 2015, Deutsch reached out to Dorland, a Montreal born New York based artist who worked as the painter’s studio assistant as an undergraduate. Dorland enthusiastically agreed to team up his longtime friend, but the pair knew that with their robust studio practices, they needed a third partner. Enter Smith, the Dallas-born former Exhibition A director, to round out command. Together, the newly minted trio opened its doors in early 2016 with a William Wegman show. Wegman and Deutsch dear friends since their early twenties.

INSTALL OF EBECHO MUSLIMOVA’S SELF TITLED SOLO SHOW EARLIER IN 2018. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE GALLERY.

The narrative Magenta Plains chases is a unique product of the gallery’s scope of leadership. “Three is a interesting number,” Olivia observes of their triangulated union, made more compelling by the age gap. Deutsch in particular brings a unique perspective to the space, with his long vision to what an artist career looks like, and what a gallery can actually be to an artist. “David knows what a fifty to sixty year career looks like,” Dorland emphasizes. “And we have taken a long arc in mind while forming the gallery.”

Of the curiously titled space, cheekily devoid of authorship, Smith says, “we knew wanted a creative name.” She continues: “Something with more breathing room, that allowed others to draw their own associations.” A game of exquisite corpse placed “magenta” and “plains” together and it stuck. Smith describes the malleability of a word like magenta, a color that conjures painting, as much as CYMK color model of the digitalscape.

INSTALL OF BILL SAYLOR’S SHOW, ‘SHALLOW BALLERS’ AT MAGENTA PLAINS IN 2017. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE GALLERY.

It’s a flexibility further expressed in the gallery’s programming, where the colorful, gestural works of culty painter Bill Saylor, pivotal to 1990’s Brooklyn scene, is represented alongside the young satirical artist Ebecho Muslimova, who recently wrapped up her lauded first solo show with the gallery earlier this year, taking her cartoonish alter ego “Fatebe” from ink to paint for the first time. Both artists are included in the pithy list of artists the gallery now represents, diverse in age and practice, which also includes Alex Kwartler, Anne Libby, Don Dudley, Peter Nagy, Nathaniel Robinson, Tiril Hasselknippe and Zach Bruder. 

The gallery’s interest in emergent art as much as emerging artists, gives way to play and rediscovery. For example, for Magenta’s first foray into the art fair circuit with the Independent, the gallery will feature 1980’s works by Peter Nagy. Along with fellow artist Alan Belcher, Nagy created Nature Morte, part of a constellation of artist-run spaces in East Village during the eighties, that served as the breeding ground for artists like Richard Prince, Peter Halley and Jeff Koons. Nagy’s gallery also launched the career of punk painter Steven Parrino, who also will be featured in Magenta’s Independent showing alongside contemporary sculptor, Anne Libby and painter Don Dudley. 

“The artists we show at Magenta Plains like the range and context we are providing for their work to exist within a broader conversation,” Olivia says. This is a relationship that goes both ways. When I caught up with Deutsch from his studio, he said the gallery, and its dialogue with younger artists has opened up his practice too. “It gets me out of my studio, which is something I needed” he joking adds, “left to my own devices, I’d be here seven days a week.”

PATRON MAGAZINE: ”TÊTE-À-TÊTE” DALLAS-BORN ISAAC LYLES AND OLIVIA SMITH DISCUSS STARTING UP THEIR MANHATTAN GALLERIES AND EXHIBITING AT THE DALLAS ART FAIR

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Published in the Feb/March 2018 issue of Patron Magazine