After nearly a year as FOOD head chef, Lucien Smith returns to the canvas for Burn Down the House, his first U.K. solo exhibition at Kearsey & Gold. Running through July 17, the presentation introduces a new series of airbrush paintings centered on a single image: Dorothy’s house falling through the sky from The Wizard of Oz.
Throughout the London gallery, small-scale canvases present varying views of the airborne structure. However, the compositions omit familiar elements associated with the film, including the rainbow, ruby slippers, and the moment of impact.
Instead, Smith employs the image as a metaphor for instability and the loss of control. Consequently, the paintings examine the experience of seeing familiar foundations suddenly disappear.
“Everything you’ve built, thrown up in the air,” he wrote. “I want to know what’s on the other side of that.”
Personal Reinvention Shapes the Artist’s Latest Body of Work
Over recent years, Smith has spoken publicly about refining his artistic practice following the rapid rise and subsequent challenges that accompanied his early success. As a result, he relocated to Montauk and established Serving the People, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting artists.
He later returned to New York to lead his restaurant FOOD, which also incorporates his airbrush artworks. Meanwhile, Burn Down the House represents Smith’s first exhibition since opening the restaurant last fall.
For his ongoing London exhibition, Smith cites a list of inspirations Martha Rosler, Cady Noland, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer’s “Protect Me From What I Want,” and “Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads, all of which play on the gap between desire and fulfillment and the uneasy aftermath after achieving the American Dream.
Therefore, the exhibition places Smith’s latest paintings within a broader lineage of conceptual art, text-based practice, and cultural critique. In addition, the references connect his work to artists who have long examined identity, consumer culture, and aspiration.
London Exhibition Questions Ideas of Success and Stability
Accordingly, Burn Down the House invites viewers to reflect on the structures that shape personal ambition and the uncertainty that can follow achievement. Through repeated imagery and airbrush techniques, Smith transforms a familiar cinematic symbol into a meditation on change and impermanence.
“Even though I am not telling you to burn it down, I am asking you if you could,” Smith continued. “I am asking you to think about what we are actually building when we say we are building a life, and what it all might mean, in the half-second before the house comes crashing down.”
Burning Down the House is now on view in London.
Kearsey & Gold
76 Brewer St,
London W1F 9TX,
United Kingdom