by Mia Butter // Dec. 2, 2025
Art Cologne filled the streets with gallerists and collectors at the beginning of November. As one gallery after another opened a new exhibition, the buzz faded just as quickly as it had begun. After the dust had settled, I found my way to Gathering, the London gallery’s Cologne expansion, to see a melancholic painting show, or so the press release assured me. ‘Brick boys,’ Laurie Smith’s debut European solo show, does feel moody, but more nostalgic than melancholic. Balthus and Martin Wong are “touchstones” for the artist: Wong as a reference point for brick-laden street paintings, for one, and Balthus as a heavy stylistic influence. The largest painting of the five-piece show, ‘Pavement saints,’ references Balthus’ 1933 painting ‘The Street,’ although the violence and indifference in the Polish-French artist’s work have nothing to do with London-based Smith’s tender and intimate scene. Observing a boy in a black tanktop, some smirk and others watch absent-mindedly, but not indifferently.
Laurie Smith: ‘Brick boys,’ 2025, installation view at Gathering Cologne // Courtesy of the artist and Gathering, photo by Ollie Hammick
Not particularly contemporary in style, nor in the fashion of the figures, the works are described as possessing “a distinctly contemporary register” by the exhibition text. This forces a label on the work that does not inherently apply, since Smith is clearly referencing historical painting and popular queer culture from roughly 30 years ago. The works are snapshot depictions of the night, intimate stills of the walk home, the energy that seeps out of the bars and onto the silent streets. They quietly capture the contrast of indoor and outdoor night scenes, the difference in the volume of your voice in the bar and then on the noiseless street. The energy changes, as though the protagonists of the scene are in limbo, from one gathering to the next, as their buzz ricochets off the Victorian brick townhouses. This experience is timeless—not distinctly contemporary nor historical—and feels like a moment of navigating the streets as a space shared by all, but not equally welcoming for everyone.
Smith’s show ‘Private Lives’ at Brunette Coleman earlier this year presented a group of works similarly depicting queer nightlife, but indoors. Bars, clubs, stages and queer spaces frozen in time, dynamic hair flicks and muscles tensed in movement drag your eyes across the canvas. ‘Brick Boys’ comes after these figures have left the venue, if they ever went to one at all.
Laurie Smith: ‘Private Rituals,’ 2025, oil on canvas // Courtesy of Gathering and the artist, photo by Ollie Hammick
‘Private rituals’ and ‘Pavement saints’ show the protagonists emerging from the shadows. Their clothing, body language and age, in some cases, call the two children from the 1990 film ‘Paris is Burning’ to mind. Aged 13 and 15 at the time of filming, they are being interviewed on the streets in the early hours of the morning, no parents or curfew to adhere to. Continued in the painting ‘still burning,’ two boys from ‘Pavement saints’ are captured seconds later in new positions, alone as a cropped section of the larger painting, and referencing the iconic documentary.
The ‘Pavement saints’ claim the street as theirs, and in what reads as a photograph translated into an oil painting, a millisecond is captured. Motion blur and micro-expressions included. Smith beautifully renders light hitting the bricks, bouncing off the boys’ hats, or finding itself flooding out of an illuminated window onto the street below. The yellow lane divider slices through the scene as a beacon of color, guiding the saints, a recurring detail also seen in ‘City fucks back.’ In another snapshot-style piece, a man walks past a hotel with one window illuminated, highlighting the silhouette of a woman lighting a cigarette. The man appears unaware of the viewer, but it’s as though a camera flash is hitting his skin. Smith assumes the role of a documentarian through his paintings, an invisible observer, but still present. As though his presence does not change the behavior of his subjects, he catches them dancing, walking or leaning against a brick wall.
Laurie Smith: ‘Body,’ 2025, oil on canvas // Courtesy of Gathering and the artist, photo by Ollie Hammick
As the sun crawls back into the sky and daylight turns the midnight blue into something paler, the feeling changes. A building stands alone in ‘Body’; ironically, nobody leans against its exterior, but some of the shutters are swung open, signalling a sign of life. Our protagonists have left, fleeing the light of day, or so it feels in ‘Burn me into the skyline.’ A man shoves past the viewer, his face screwed up from running, squinting in the light, and Smith’s brushstrokes drag his skin back as though pulled by the wind against his face.
Laurie Smith: ‘Burn me into the skyline,’ 2025, oil on canvas // Courtesy of the artist and Gathering, photo by Ollie Hammick
Smith leans into an impressionist painting style with blocked brushstrokes and thick layers, thematically somewhere between Balthus and Patrick Angus, and yet distinctly his own. The show, though small, recreates a vivid and yet hushed atmosphere. As the winter sun now sets in Germany during the gallery’s opening hours, the outdoors mimic the shades depicted in the works and, after seeing the show, the walk home feels all the more inspiring.
Exhibition Info
Gathering
Laurie Smith: ‘Brick boys’
Exhibition: Nov. 5-Dec. 20, 2025
gathering.london
Roonstraße 108, 50674 Cologne, click here for map
