12 DECEMBER – 28 JANUARY
Each generation inherits a world it did not create. What we carry forward, and what we choose to change, shapes what comes next. In Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Frans Smit explores this relationship through a new body of paintings concerned with time, transformation and renewal.
Traditional oil-painting techniques meet airbrush and spray paint, while flowers, insects and unexpected objects suggest the fragile cycles of life. Flies evoke decay; butterflies suggest the possibility of change. These encounters bring the historical language of still life into a contemporary world.
Having turned fifty this year, Smit is also reconsidering his own relationship with painting. Working slowly through successive layers, he is allowing greater time for discovery and refinement. The exhibition emerges from this willingness to question familiar methods and remain open to what lies ahead.
The title holds these enquiries together. Yesterday encompasses both the history of painting and Smit’s own accumulated experience. Today is the space of making, where inherited knowledge meets intuition, experimentation and the unexpected. Tomorrow remains open: something discovered through painting rather than determined in advance.
Within the still life, these ideas become tangible. Flowers bloom and fade; insects signal both deterioration and renewal. Objects gathered within a single composition carry different associations, bringing beauty into proximity with impermanence. Smit invites us to spend time with these encounters and consider how the past continues to shape what we see, and what we might yet become.
