Ep.272 David Smalling (b. 1987, Kingston, Jamaica) lives and works in New York. He studied Mathematics at Yale University, where he also trained at the Yale School of Art, and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Smalling’s painting practice examines the invisible architectures through which cultural hierarchies, inherited rituals, and social taboos shape identity. Working through the visual language of Mannerism, Dutch Golden Age still life, and Old Master painting, he approaches the panel as a diagnostic surface: a place where shame, desire, aspiration, and restraint are staged with theatrical precision.
His meticulous compositions often unfold within domestic and ceremonial interiors, where silver platters, pearls, ribbons, brass instruments, mattresses, and other charged objects become symbols of belonging and control. These objects appear seductive at first, but gradually reveal systems of pressure: codes of class, gender, decorum, and performance that shape the body before the body itself appears. In Smalling’s paintings, the feast, the bedroom, and the still life become psychological arenas in which access to elite or aspirational spaces is granted only through subtle forms of compliance.
Drawing from the tradition of vanitas painting, Smalling reanimates the memento mori for a contemporary world whose inherited codes have aged but not disappeared. The snail, a recurring motif in his work, operates as a quiet agent of entropy: a slow, viscous disruption within otherwise pristine arrangements of wealth and beauty. Its trace becomes a measure of time, decay, and the instability beneath polished surfaces.
Smalling’s practice is also shaped by a rigorous computational process. Through proprietary systems developed by the artist, including Autoglaze and Wide Gamut Pigment, he decomposes images into physically realizable layers of translucent oil paint, translating questions of color, optics, and perception into a precise choreography of material execution. This fusion of algorithmic structure and classical craft allows his paintings to inhabit a space between artifice and revelation, where beauty becomes both seduction and evidence.
In 2026, TEMPLON New York presented Elizabethan Collar, Smalling’s first exhibition with the gallery. Taking its title from the veterinary device colloquially known as the “cone of shame,” the exhibition explored conditional belonging, the cost of access, and the fragile performance of identity within spaces of prestige. Through lacquered surfaces, artificial light, and meticulously staged symbolic objects, Smalling invites viewers to recognize the systems they inhabit, and the roles they have learned to perform within them.
Headshot Photo Credit: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Artist https://www.david-smalling.com/
Templon Gallery https://www.templon.com/artists/david-smalling/
Impulse Magazine https://www.impulsemagazine.com/articles
Galerie Magazine https://galeriemagazine.com/must-see-solo-gallery-shows-april-2026
Whitehot Magazine https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/elizabethan-collar-at-galerie-templon/7720
Ocula https://ocula.com/art-galleries/daniel-templon/exhibitions/elizabethan-collar/
Yale University Radio https://museumofnonvisibleart.com/interviews/david-smalling/
Heni News https://heni.com/news?artist=David%20Smalling
Palo Gallery https://www.palogallery.com/exhibitions/32-david-smalling-wood-and-water/works/
ArtRabbit https://www.artrabbit.com/events/david-smalling-wood-and-water
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