Smear was a prolific graffiti writer in Los Angeles who is now focusing his artistic efforts on his paintings. His style is reminiscent of neo-expressionism with a high dose of graffiti influenced by his years of work on the streets. He has been profiled numerous times in media everywhere including in the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, the Art Newspaper as well as KTLA News and NPR, among many others.
Cristian Gheorghiu’s (aka SMEAR) visceral, highly personal style of painting emulates the messy workings of the total-information age, layering forms and images with powerful, slashing brush strokes of rhythmic, unifying admixtures and improvised, frenzied lines coupled with brilliant color to achieve a simplified language. Gheorghiu counters his free, muscular brushstrokes by loading his paintings with rags and tatters of cloth, reproductions, fragments of comic strips, and other collage elements of waste and discarded materials to convey maps of mental states.
SMEAR: Stranger in a Strange Land
Wrestling with ways to make a mark despite the dismaying potency of mediated imagery and the inescapable codes of representation, Gheorghiu paints in two or more styles at once, often in the same painting, denying the absolute rightness of any canon of beauty or truth, scavenging and mingling imagery almost as promiscuously as the media. Picking and adding ingredients to his taste he works the surfaces over with paint in the characteristic, spontaneous gestural language of action painting.
Solo Exhibitions:
Cream of Meat
Buckwild, Venice, CA July 24 – August 28, 2010
From Immigration to Integration
Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, CA September 19 – October 24, 2009
I’m Tired of Being Sexy
Lawrence Asher Gallery, Los Angeles, CA August 15 – August 29, 2009
Savage Stomach Pains
Han Cholo, Los Angeles, CA September 18 – October 15, 2009
Îmi place păsărică Curve, Bucharest, Romania March 8 – April 5, 2008
2007 – 2010 Select Group Exhibitions
Stand Tall
Old Crow, Oakland, CA April 9 – May 1, 2010
Emphasis:Extreme (representing Crewest)
OCCCA, Santa Ana, CA July 3 – July 25, 2009
The Gift (of Fear)
Bandit Gallery, Los Angeles, CA May 15 – June 8, 2009
Printed
Crewest, Los Angeles, CA December 6 – January 4
The Inaugural Show
T&P
Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA November 7 December 4, 2008
Mona Lisa
Strychin Gallery, Berlin, Germany January 25 February 22, 2008
Block Party
Monkey House, Los Angeles, CA October 6 – October 17, 2007
Recess: A Custom Lunchbox Group Show
Monkey House, Los Angeles, CA September 8 – September 19, 2007
Strangers
Platypus, Long Beach, CA February 10 – March 3, 2007
Public Art and Special Projects
Live Paintings at New Mastodon, Los Angeles, CA
Goethe Institute Fundraiser, Los Angeles,
CA Toys for Tots Benefit, San Diego, CA
Bibliography
Label 228, Soft Skull Publishing, 1st Edition 2009
Los Angeles Times, Andrew Blankstein, December 28, 2009
Ventura County Star, October 16, 2009
Daily News Los Angeles, Wire Service, October 8 2009
Citzen LA, A Moret, August Issue, 2009
Brand X, Ali Ward, August 13 Issue, 2009
Canyon News, LaDale Anderson, February 7, 2009
Los Angeles Times, Richard Winton, January 29, 2009
Los Angeles Times, Richard Winton, January 28, 2009
USA Today, Wire Service, January 28, 2009
Select Private/PublicCollections
Ventura Country Museum of Art
Christian Oliver
Art Medina
Jonathan Kramer
Norman Clarke
Hans Jergen Schatt
