For a preview of the exhibition's paintings contact suzanne@whitneymodern.com for a login to the Private Viewing tab.  

In Lived & Loved, California native Gordon Smedt presents a compelling new body of work that examines the emotional resonance embedded within everyday objects. Through his distinct visual language—rooted in pop realism yet infused with painterly sensitivity—Smedt elevates the ordinary to the iconic, inviting viewers to engage not only with the materiality of these objects but with the memories and narratives they hold.

Smedt’s chosen objects—sun-faded jeans, vintage dresses, typesetting blocks, old beer cans and license plates—are imbued with signs of human use and affection. These are not pristine emblems of consumerism, but rather vessels of memory: scratched, creased, well-worn, and deeply felt. In this way, his work departs from the slick detachment of classic Pop and moves toward something more intimate, more phenomenological. The title Lived & Loved suggests both biography and poetics—objects that, through time and touch, become surrogates for experience.

In California DREAMIN, Smedt renders a California license plate with near-monumental scale, transforming a utilitarian object into a meditation on identity, aspiration, and cultural geography.  It’s a visual love letter to the California dream from someone who was born within it.

Perhaps one of the most poignant is Serentity, a suspended vintage-style dress rendered with both technical mastery and emotional nuance. The garment appears weightless, caught between presence and memory—an intimate portrait of femininity, time, and sentiment.

Smedt’s work is deeply Californian in spirit—sunlit, relaxed, quietly revolutionary—but also deeply human. Lived & Loved is, at its core, a meditation on how meaning accumulates: how objects, through time and touch, bear witness to the stories of our lives.