Exhibitions

RUSSELL KATZ

SPILT is pleased to present SMOKE, our inaugural exhibition of paintings by artist Russell Katz. Through stark monochromatic paintings depicting explosions, tangled trees in dormancy, and layered compositions, Katz reflects on the way human activities shape and unsettle the world in which we live.

A centerpiece of the exhibition, Smoke BW Large, 2025, draws on photographs from the Second World War. Katz has transformed these archival scenes into symbolic imagery of existence, destruction, and after the smoke dissipates, rebirth.

Artist’s website www.wno.blue

Artist’s Statement

My paintings are an attempt to have a conversation with the past. There is an obvious absurdity to hand-making a new image from an old photograph. But I don’t know how to look with more accuracy, or how to understand something without giving it my full attention.

I create portraits—not of people, but of their reflections on the changing world. My work captures moments of transformation, when new technologies enable unprecedented actions, reshaping our environment and, in turn, reflecting nature back at us.

As Thomas Joshua Cooper said, “Gazing is my primary physical activity.” Yet truly seeing is elusive. We attempt to control nature, bending it to our will, only to find our vision obstructed—clouded, refracted, distorted. There is always something in the way.

The use of photography itself is both a tool and a trick. A product of technological advancement, it gives the illusion of clarity; when in reality, it only captures fragments of an ever-shifting world. Certainty is a myth. Seeing is impossibly difficult. Moments in time impossibly thin.

Everything we perceive is filtered through layers—atmosphere, windows, lenses, history, distortion. Memory shifts, interpretation reshapes understanding. Even as we attempt to share our vision, we must ask: who is truly looking? And what do they see?