Photo courtesy of No Instructions
'The wisdom of partial doubt' by Fred Smith (2026)
Fred Smith's 'The wisdom of partial doubt' 48.75 x 66” Oil on canvas 2026.
The term “nowhere maxxing” has gained traction online to describe the tendency of cities to settle into a single state of faux high-end nothingness. The idea is that, as cities update themselves to attract residents, they borrow, incestuously, from a shared template, setting off a contagious feedback loop of homogeneity. In the process, young, rootless people are encouraged to move wherever life is cheapest and most convenient. What once made places like Chicago or Detroit feel unique and gritty is slowly being replaced by a kind of bourgeois slop that is just as easy for, say, Tulsa to recreate.
So, if you’re a 25-year-old single man without a stable job or romantic entanglements, why not move to Chattanooga or Omaha?
A similar phenomenon has occurred in the art world, only here the creative furnaces are places and institutions like RISD, Bushwick, or the Hunter College MFA program. Coupled with social media’s conditioning of our retinas and attention spans, the value of those once-inimitable wellsprings of good living has diminished. So why not bypass graduate school, move to Upstate New York, and do your own thing?
Many have, and that’s exactly what artist Fred Smith has done. The strange and singular results of his alternative path to creativity are everywhere in his exhibition at No Instructions in Bay View, aptly titled The Life of a Luddite (through September 25).
Happier Lives?
According to Smith, “‘Life of a Luddite’ has a lot more to do with the relationship I have with the world, and as a result of that, painting. The technological advancements that we think benefit our daily lives don’t always generate a happier or more productive existence.” That mantra is present immediately upon entering the intimate gallery space on Rusk Street in Bay View, where, through September 25, visitors are surrounded by a veritable 13th-century manorial estate of hyperactive knights in armor, enfolding them in the twisted world of one artist’s teeming psyche.
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The paintings are often large and technically involved, which only adds to the show’s wraparound effect. The Wisdom of Partial Doubt, a 48-by-66-inch canvas, features a cowering knight holding a flower on the safe side of a wooden fence. A vaginal opening looks out ambiguously toward the source of his anxiety. His simpering fear seems mostly of his own making, but it feels as real as the world he’s created. Allegorical, perhaps; strangely relatable, for sure.
Our skepticism about this cavalier’s mettle is continuously addressed in other works. I Have No Folktales, I Barely Have Cohesive Thoughts reveals a knight holding a pencil and sweating nervously, drawing the viewer further into an allegorical reading—if the title alone didn’t already spill the beans. Painter’s block? Paralysis by analysis? Titles and images continue to work in tandem in Self-Sabotage, a smaller painting with an equally wrenching climax: the now club-toting knight botches a possibly amorous interaction with an armored female counterpart, leaving us to wonder where the paint, the image, and the artist meet.
Symbolic Struggle
Thus, armor becomes increasingly metaphorical, and the paintings build toward a tableau of symbolic struggle within the studio. They’re so vulnerable, uniquely painted, and immersive that you can’t help but sink in and empathize. And sinking in is so hard to do in an age of scrolling that we naturally become willing eavesdroppers and shoulders of support.
The gangly awkwardness of Smith’s work took me back to my own salad days, watching older, more adroit kids risk double quarters on the high-speed, high-stakes world of Dragon’s Lair. There’s a lot of Dirk the Daring in Smith’s dreamy heraldic world: ungainly, fantastical, and awkward, but channeled through an individual life and consciousness, leaving a stumblingly personal fantasy world dancing behind.
The irony of a forlorn, armored knight-against-the-world disarming the viewer is kind of brilliant. To go from funny—ha ha—to sinister and dark, to pure pathos, is uncommon in a defensive and self-conscious world. In the art world today, such emotional range is probably existentially vital.
Smith’s work might finally make you want to throw your phone into the moat, put on a suit of cultural armor, and head to ye-olde Finger Lakes to build a new mythology for yourself—with a little more struggle and vulnerability, and a lot more humanity.
