Exhibitions —

Engaging abstraction as a notational procedure, Bronson Smillie intervenes on predetermined design elements as presented in bygone industrial stationaries, physical media storage units, typesets, and other materials out of step with digital time. Inflecting simple lines, circles, colored swaths, stuffed pulp, buttons, and textiles, he crafts ebullient imagery into and atop his desired containers, uncoupling these decommissioned sources from their origin use, toward new life. In this way, the work has a unique aesthetic register that, through an ecological ethic, activates object aura and empathy from nostalgia. In a world of material excess, Smillie triages the “waste” that trails technological “progress."

For Barely Fair, 2025, april april presents a suite of wall-bound bookworks by Smillie, as well as a site-specific floor installation made of vintage toy blocks.

Bronson Smillie (b.1992, Calgary, Alberta) currently lives and works in Montréal, Canada and holds a BFA in Painting and Drawing from Concordia University. Solo presentations include Afternoon Projects, Vancouver (2023); april april, New York, NY (2023); Espace Maurice, Montréal, Canada (2022); NADA New York, with april april (2022); and MoMAPS311, Ottawa, Canada (2019). Recent group exhibitions include LVL3, Chicago (2025); EUROPA, New York (2024); Bad Water, Knoxville (2024); Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York (2023); Pangée, Montréal (2024); Pictura Biennale, Stewart Hall Gallery, Montreal (2023); AXENÉO7, Gatineau, Canada (2022); Five AM, Calgary (2019); Untitled Arts Society, Calgary (2018); and Eastern Bloc, Montréal, Canada (2017), among others.