Contributed by Sharon Butler / From November 9 to 14, Two Coats of Paint will host Joseph Smolinski, a multidisciplinary artist and educator born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, and based in New Haven, Connecticut. Over the past 15 years, his research-based work has explored how communication networks, energy and oil industries, and industrial agriculture infrastructure fundamentally shape both our conception of “the natural environment” and its physical reality. For him, the two don’t seem starkly distinguishable. In the recent Artforum article “Call of the Wild,” Harmon Siegel too questions the rigid bifurcation of art and nature, pointedly recalling Jackson Pollock’s immortal “I am nature” crack. Siegel inaugurates what he calls “ecoformalism” – “art that, if it depicts nature, does so to show us how it is nature, and so helps us recognize, sensibly and intuitively, the nature that is ourselves.” That may be part of what Smolinski is driving at.
During his Two Coats of Paint residency, Smolinski will present some of the work from “Vanishing Point,” a solo exhibition that is on view at the Seton Gallery at the University of New Haven through November 6. “Open Water” is a series of graphite renderings informed by the oceans’ critical role in sustaining life on Earth. From carbon-rich fragments gathered from Long Island Sound, he has rendered in his “Sea Coal Mosaics” images having to do with time: the setting sun, the rapid combustion of fossil fuels, and the acceleration of geological events. “Climate Repository” is a presentational sculpture built from a historic local oak tree that fell on the New Haven Green in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy, comprising a set of shelves and drawings, small sculptures, and found objects that washed up on the Connecticut shoreline. He will also bring several pieces from a new series of laser-etched paintings that depict the roiling ocean against the distant horizon.
Smolenski’s approach is marked by the use of traditional media alongside contemporary digital technologies, reflecting the tension he feels between nostalgia for an idealized past and the seemingly unstoppable momentum towards a tech-defined future. In the Connecticut Art Review, Jacquelyn Gleisner observed Smolinski’s grim tone, his implicit lament about humankind’s “ecological authoritarianism,” and inaction in the face of its own ravaging behavior. His approach, however, is demonstrative rather than didactic. He wants, he has said, to make not just a political point but also “something beautiful” and “poetic.” This conviction could make his work especially persuasive to audiences that have become touchy, exhausted, or simply shellshocked.
Biography: Joseph Smolinski is a professor at the University of New Haven and the co-founder of Low Season Artist Projects on Block Island. He received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin (1999) and his MFA from the University of Connecticut (2001). His work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (Ridgefield, CT), Diverse Works (Houston, TX), the McDonough Museum of Art (Youngstown, OH), MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), and the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT), and in solo exhibitions at ArtSpace (New Haven, CT), Mixed Greens (New York, NY), Real Art Ways (Hartford, CT), and Swarm Gallery (Oakland, CA). Smolinski’s work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art Papers, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times, among other publications. He has received fellowships and awards from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation (2012), Connecticut Commission of the Arts (2012), and Wesleyan University (Distinguished Visiting Scholar, 2014. Residencies include the Vermont Studio Center (2025), Wassaic Projects (2021), and the Happy and Bob Doran Connecticut AIR Program at the Yale University Art Gallery (2022).
Joseph Smolinski, Two Coats of Paint Artist Residency, 22-19 41st Avenue, 6th Floor, Studio #10, Long Island City, NY. November 9–14, 2025. Please join us for an Open Studio on Wednesday, November 12, 5–7 pm. For more information, or to arrange a studio visit, please contact: STAFF@twocoatsofpaint.com. Please put Joseph Smolinski in the subject line. Follow Joe on Instagram @josephsmolinski
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Studio listening: “I either work in silence or with very loud music from my formative years growing up in Minnesota and skateboarding with my crew. Some of my favorite albums with a connection to Minnesota are Bob Dylan’s Desire and Highway 61 Revisited, , Duplomacy’s All These Long Drives, Low’s Secret Name and The Things We Lost in the Fire (any Low album is amazing), Prince’s Purple Rain and 1999, the Replacements’ Let It Be and Tim, and Tapes ‘n Tapes’ The Loon.”
On view:
“Vanishing Point: Solo exhibition by Joseph Smolinski,” Seton Gallery, University of New Haven, October 16 – November 6, 2025.
Upcoming:
“For Which It Stands,” January 22 – July 25, 2026, Fairfield University Art Museum, Fairfield, CT.
About the author: Sharon Butler is a painter and the publisher of Two Coats of Paint. Follow her on Instagram @sharon_butler
