1999
Installation, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA (US)
Vacuum-formed suburban zoning map system, six unique tiles, each 45x45cm

A hand-designed, mass-produced, vacuum-formed plastic urban zoning relief map. Derived from actual Northern California zoning maps, the layout of any sized overall plan is composed of six basic inter-connecting 45x45cm square tiles. The overall design varies according to predictability and chance. Unlimited edition (displayed in groups of 9, 18, 36, 72). 

Anytown is a neat swipe at land use planning and a comic remembrance of minimal sculpture. Smith has made 18-inch squares of pale yellow plastic embossed with low relief that denotes snaking streets and chockablock housing units. The plastic plaques come in six distinct patterns worked out so well that, placed edge to edge, they connect in any configuration. Their array can extend indefinitely in all directions. The town-planning vision Anytown evokes is a nightmare of deadening redundancy, not unlike what we see in parts of San Francisco. Besides being an anti-utopian vision of suburban growth, Anytown reflects wryly on the square plate floor sculptures of Carl Andre, classics of minimalism. It recalls Andre's famous statement that "my idea of a piece of sculpture is a road." In their reductive logic, Andre's floor pieces were intended to be critical of how the world is arranged. Smith's Anytown hints that by revising Andre's works as relief sculpture it uncovers the world order implicit in minimalism. (Kenneth Baker)