rodolphe janssen | current - emily mae smith · 2020. 11. 29. · emily mae smith’s ‘tesla...

Emily Mae Smith

PRESS KIT

Emily Mae Smith’s ‘Tesla Girls’ @ rodolphe janssen, Brussels, Juxtapoz Magazine, by Sasha Bogojev, October 13, 2016

PAINTING

EMILY MAE SMITH'S "TESLA GIRLS" @RODOLPHE JANSSEN, BRUSSELSOct 13, 2016 - Nov 12, 2016

Rodolphe Janssen Gallery, Brussels

After successful solo shows in Glasgow and New York, and taking part in major group

showings in Los Angeles, New York and Miami, Emily Mae Smith will be having her first

solo show at the Rodolphe Janssen gallery in Brussels. We're excited to share with you

couple of peeks at what she worked on for "Tesla Girls" that will open on 13th of

October.

Read more below

SECTIONS EVENTS JUX TV SHOP MORE

PAINTING

EMILY MAE SMITH'S "TESLA GIRLS" @RODOLPHE JANSSEN, BRUSSELSOct 13, 2016 - Nov 12, 2016

Rodolphe Janssen Gallery, Brussels

After successful solo shows in Glasgow and New York, and taking part in major group

showings in Los Angeles, New York and Miami, Emily Mae Smith will be having her first

solo show at the Rodolphe Janssen gallery in Brussels. We're excited to share with you

couple of peeks at what she worked on for "Tesla Girls" that will open on 13th of

October.

Read more below

SECTIONS EVENTS JUX TV SHOP MORE

EMILY MAE SMITH BRUSSELS PAINTING

� � �

hooks, are some of the recurring images we've seen previously in works by Austin-

born artist. With her new body of work, Emily Mae Smith brings most of these elements

back, but in different interactions and telling different stories. Though very pop-art at

first, her meticulously rendered oils feature strong surrealist and even Disney-like

iconography. But behind the rich layers of vibrant colors and sharp imagery, visual wit

and dark humor reveals her cheeky commentary on issues like gender, capitalism and

violence. Unusual mixture of cartoon-like elements against photo realistic imagery and

even digital graphic effects, creates an unique aesthetic wrapped in carefully

constructed and strict compositions. Her Brussels debut is titled after Christopher

Priest’s 1995 novel "The Prestige" in which Nikola Tesla builds a flawed teleportation

machine that merely creates a duplicate of the original item or person. For this show

Smith painted a new series of recognizable female portraits that are her vision of such

accidental duplicate mistakes. Stripped of any recognizable features, they are

representing women whose "interiority, subjectivity, and psychology is completely

absent as a visual language in western culture.” -Sasha Bogojev

Photo credit by the artist

[email protected] — WWW.RODOLPHEJANSSEN.COM

Portfolio: Emily Mae Smith, by Emily Mae Smith, in Frieze, September, 29th, 2016

E D I T O R I A L O N V I E W FA I R S V I D E O A C A D E M Y !"

LO G I N

Alice Mackler,

Outer Space,

1968, acrylic on

canvas, 76 x 61

cm. Courtesy:

the artist and

Kerry Schuss,

New York

I N F LU E N C E S - 2 9 S E P 2 0 1 6

Portfolio: EmilyMae SmithB Y E M I L Y M A E S M I T H

Ahead of her show at Rodolphe Janssen,Brussels, the New York-based artist gatherstogether her favourite fantasy !gures fromart history

My new show ‘Tesla Girls’ at Rodolphe Janssen in Brussels primarily

comprises dystopian portrait paintings of isolated !ctional bodies

that integrate feminist theories about corporeality. In light of this, I

have chosen some of my favourite paintings that feature the !gure

as construction for fantasy, projection and speculation.

Alice Mackler, Outer SpaceOuter Space, 1968

F O L LO W

#T W I T T E R

$F A C E B O O K

%E M A I LT O&

P I N T E R E S T


E D I T O R I A L O N V I E W FA I R S V I D E O A C A D E M Y !"

LO G I N

Alice Mackler,

Outer Space,

1968, acrylic on

canvas, 76 x 61

cm. Courtesy:

the artist and

Kerry Schuss,

New York

I N F LU E N C E S - 2 9 S E P 2 0 1 6

Portfolio: EmilyMae SmithB Y E M I L Y M A E S M I T H

Ahead of her show at Rodolphe Janssen,Brussels, the New York-based artist gatherstogether her favourite fantasy !gures fromart history

My new show ‘Tesla Girls’ at Rodolphe Janssen in Brussels primarily

comprises dystopian portrait paintings of isolated !ctional bodies

that integrate feminist theories about corporeality. In light of this, I

have chosen some of my favourite paintings that feature the !gure

as construction for fantasy, projection and speculation.

Alice Mackler, Outer SpaceOuter Space, 1968

F O L LO W

#T W I T T E R

$F A C E B O O K

%E M A I LT O&

P I N T E R E S T

René Magritte,

Lola de Valence,

1948, gouache

on paper, 46 x

38 cm.

Courtesy: open

source

Sir Thomas

Lawrence,

Portrait of

Elizabeth Farren,

1790, oil on

canvas, 2.4 × 1.5

m. Courtesy:

Metropolitan

Museum of Art,

New York;

bequest of

Edward S.

Harkness, 1940

Alice Mackler (b.1931 New York) is primarily known for her small,

semi-!gurative ceramic sculptures. However, she also makes

drawings, works on paper, and has made some paintings – including

this one. The few single-!gure paintings I have seen are dated

between 1968-69. The painterly language of Outer Space is art

historically familiar thanks to modernism and pop, but the subject is,

quite literally, a woman alien to those narratives. Reconciling this

disparity is part of the joy of this work, and is why it feels so fresh to

me.

René Magritte, Lola de ValenceLola de Valence, 1948

Like Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ 1814 painting Grande

Odalisque, which is a ri# on David’s Portrait of Madame Récamier

(and will appear later in this Portfolio), here Magritte names his work

Lola de Valence and thus draws on another painter’s (Manet’s)

!gure. This gouache painting on paper is from his Vache period – a

terri!c body of work that attacked the surrealist status quo. I think

of this painting as a feminist retort to surrealism’s often-perfunctory

use of the female body.


René Magritte,

Lola de Valence,

1948, gouache

on paper, 46 x

38 cm.

Courtesy: open

source

Sir Thomas

Lawrence,

Portrait of

Elizabeth Farren,

1790, oil on

canvas, 2.4 × 1.5

m. Courtesy:

Metropolitan

Museum of Art,

New York;

bequest of

Edward S.

Harkness, 1940









me.











René Magritte,

Lola de Valence,

1948, gouache

on paper, 46 x

38 cm.

Courtesy: open

source

Sir Thomas

Lawrence,

Portrait of

Elizabeth Farren,

1790, oil on

canvas, 2.4 × 1.5

m. Courtesy:

Metropolitan

Museum of Art,

New York;

bequest of

Edward S.

Harkness, 1940









me.










Jean

Betancourt,

Architect, date

unknown, hand-

crocheted

netting on

canvas with

original poem,

plastic box, 81 x

46 cm.

Courtesy: the

artist

Sir Thomas Lawrence, Portrait of Elizabeth FarrenPortrait of Elizabeth Farren, 1790

I saw this painting in the Metropolitan Museum when I was in

college, on what was my !rst trip to New York. There is nothing not

to love in this awesomely fussy academic painting: the clouds, the

gloved hand holding the loose glove, the fan-brushed furry mu#, her

pointy slipper toe peeking out. Because the painting is big, sections

of it appear nearly abstract. The deft paint handling depicts what it

needs to but also strangely anticipates the much later impressionist

and modernist impulse to let paint be itself. The piping detail on her

gloves looks like icing on yesterday’s cake. This thing lives in my

unconscious and parts of it have appeared in my paintings.

Advertisement

Jean Betancourt, ArchitectArchitect, date unknown

Artist and poet Jean Betancourt is a native of Williamsburg,

Brooklyn. She is nearly 80 years old and her work is still entirely


Jean

Betancourt,

Architect, date

unknown, hand-

crocheted

netting on

canvas with

original poem,

plastic box, 81 x

46 cm.

Courtesy: the

artist

Sir Thomas Lawrence, Portrait of Elizabeth FarrenPortrait of Elizabeth Farren, 1790

I saw this painting in the Metropolitan Museum when I was in

college, on what was my !rst trip to New York. There is nothing not

to love in this awesomely fussy academic painting: the clouds, the

gloved hand holding the loose glove, the fan-brushed furry mu#, her

pointy slipper toe peeking out. Because the painting is big, sections

of it appear nearly abstract. The deft paint handling depicts what it

needs to but also strangely anticipates the much later impressionist

and modernist impulse to let paint be itself. The piping detail on her

gloves looks like icing on yesterday’s cake. This thing lives in my

unconscious and parts of it have appeared in my paintings.

Advertisement

Jean Betancourt, ArchitectArchitect, date unknown

Artist and poet Jean Betancourt is a native of Williamsburg,

Brooklyn. She is nearly 80 years old and her work is still entirelyunknown to the art world. Many of her works incorporate her poetry,

written in an Emily Dickinson-esque style.

I think of this work as a painting meditating on its own self-

construction. The plastic box-painting surrogate is ensnared in the

net; the enclosed poem reads:

I AM THE ARCHITECT

OF MY MONASTIC CELL

MULTIPLIED BY VEILS

A WHISPER ALL DISPELLS

ALL FALL BEFORE

TELLING FAIRY TALES

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814, oil on canvas, 91 × 162

cm. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons; public domain

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Grande OdalisqueLa Grande Odalisque, 1814

The level of dedication to the un-reality of her body (and the fury

such invention caused) is just one of the things I love about this

painting. Like Alice Mackler’s painting, Ingres made for us a light

emitting, wholly unreal alien. The paint is profound.

E M I LY M A E S M I T H

Emily Mae Smith (b.1979) lives and works in New York, USA. Earlier

this year, she had a solo exhibition at Mary Mary, Glasgow, as part of

Glasgow International, and was included in group exhibitions at

Lucien Terras, New York; China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles;

Koenig Galerie, Berlin; and Simone Subal, New York; among others.

Her forthcoming solo exhibition, ‘Telsa Girls’, will run at Galerie

Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, from 13 October – 12 November.

#T W I T T E R$

F A C E B O O K%

E M A I LT O&P I N T E R E S T

P O R T F O L I O E M I L Y M A E S M I T H

R O D O L P H E J A N S S E N A L I C E M A C K L E R

R E N E M A G R I T T E J E A N B E T A N C O U R T


unknown to the art world. Many of her works incorporate her poetry,

written in an Emily Dickinson-esque style.

I think of this work as a painting meditating on its own self-

construction. The plastic box-painting surrogate is ensnared in the

net; the enclosed poem reads:

I AM THE ARCHITECT

OF MY MONASTIC CELL

MULTIPLIED BY VEILS

A WHISPER ALL DISPELLS

ALL FALL BEFORE

TELLING FAIRY TALES

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814, oil on canvas, 91 × 162

cm. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons; public domain

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Grande OdalisqueLa Grande Odalisque, 1814

The level of dedication to the un-reality of her body (and the fury

such invention caused) is just one of the things I love about this

painting. Like Alice Mackler’s painting, Ingres made for us a light

emitting, wholly unreal alien. The paint is profound.

E M I LY M A E S M I T H

Emily Mae Smith (b.1979) lives and works in New York, USA. Earlier

this year, she had a solo exhibition at Mary Mary, Glasgow, as part of

Glasgow International, and was included in group exhibitions at

Lucien Terras, New York; China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles;

Koenig Galerie, Berlin; and Simone Subal, New York; among others.

Her forthcoming solo exhibition, ‘Telsa Girls’, will run at Galerie

Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, from 13 October – 12 November.

#T W I T T E R$

F A C E B O O K%

E M A I LT O&P I N T E R E S T

P O R T F O L I O E M I L Y M A E S M I T H

R O D O L P H E J A N S S E N A L I C E M A C K L E R

R E N E M A G R I T T E J E A N B E T A N C O U R T

Artist Emily Mae Smith’s pop motifs and witty compositions, by Billie Muraben, It’s Nice That, August 31, 2016

Work / Art

Artist Emily Mae Smith’s pop motifs and witty compositions

Words by Billie Muraben, Wednesday 31 August 2016

Emily Mae Smith’s work encompasses references to Art Nouveau, Disney and the Chicago Imagists in poster-format,singular narrative oil paintings. Myth-fuelled and driven by characters including a recurring sunglasses-toting broom,extended tongues and butts – often framed by a moustache, and a straight and squared-off set of teeth – Emily’s worksits firmly in its own universe.

Each character or component acts as a signifier for issues in public or her private life, while also functioning asimmediate, funny and sparky compositions reminiscent of the physical comedy propagated by the likes of MontyPython. But humour isn’t used simply for effect, rather the visual set-ups often convey the truth inherent in jokes, orcreate visual motifs that could otherwise be difficult to communicate.

The Brooklyn-based artist has exhibited her work internationally, and been featured in magazines including Purple,Elephant and Artforum.

9 3

Work / Art

Artist Emily Mae Smith’s pop motifs and witty compositions

Words by Billie Muraben, Wednesday 31 August 2016

Emily Mae Smith’s work encompasses references to Art Nouveau, Disney and the Chicago Imagists in poster-format,singular narrative oil paintings. Myth-fuelled and driven by characters including a recurring sunglasses-toting broom,extended tongues and butts – often framed by a moustache, and a straight and squared-off set of teeth – Emily’s worksits firmly in its own universe.

Each character or component acts as a signifier for issues in public or her private life, while also functioning asimmediate, funny and sparky compositions reminiscent of the physical comedy propagated by the likes of MontyPython. But humour isn’t used simply for effect, rather the visual set-ups often convey the truth inherent in jokes, orcreate visual motifs that could otherwise be difficult to communicate.

The Brooklyn-based artist has exhibited her work internationally, and been featured in magazines including Purple,Elephant and Artforum.

9 3


Who am I? Provocative answers in ‘Me, Myself, I’ at China Art Objects, by Christopher Knight, LA Times, August 9, 2016

L

Who am I? Provocative answers in 'Me, Myself,I' at China Art Objects

By Christopher Knight, Art Critic

AUGUST 9, 2016, 12:05 PM

aToya Ruby Frazier’s black-and-white photograph of her grandmother shows the gray-hairedmatriarch in profile, lighting up a Pall Mall in a cluttered room stuffed with nearly two-dozendolls. It takes just a moment to register that the tousled older woman is black and that almost

all the dolls, many elaborately dressed and coifed, are white.

Between the implication of younger and older generations, where does the artist stand? Muffled andhaunting perceptions of self and family, social and individual identity, crowd the mind’s eye.

Frazier’s eight portraits, still lifes and landscapes are standouts in “Me, Myself, I,” a group show of sevenartists at China Art Objects. (The show marks the California debut of the 2015 MacArthur fellow.)Selfhood is not an uncommon subject for artistic exploration, but several selections are provocative.

In the best works, making order out of chaos goes unrequited.

SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter »

LaToya Ruby Frazier, "Grandma Ruby Smoking Pall Malls (detail)," 2002, gelatin silver print. (China Art Objects)


A printed text by Francis Stark ruminates on self-deprecation as a manipulative social tool. Shejuxtaposes the printed paragraph with all of its individual words alphabetized by first letter —lead/like/laugh/least; your/you/you/yelled, etc. — a nonsense task that results in strange poetry.

Similarly, thrift-shop browsers thumb through bins of vinyl records in a dozen photographic fliers byMoyra Davey. Bereft products of mass culture get personalized and privileged by a mix of desire and loss— which might even describe the people.

Photographs appropriated from ’80s pornography are digitally enlarged by Richard Hawkins. Fudgedand fragmented by the process, they’ve gotten to the point where the idealized young man’s once-softskin seems damaged by age — or perhaps tattooed by the artist’s memory.

A forest of wintry birches painted by Sean Landers is scarred by graffiti. Words for personal physical andcharacter traits — beautiful, intelligent, dishonest, rubes — are carved into the trees’ paper-like bark.Landers’ painting overlays urban and rural, public and private, discomfiting both the forest and its trees.

A few weak notes are struck. Emily Mae Smith’s small geometric paintings suggest open mouths thatreveal interior fantasies, but the Pop Surrealism of those inner dreams are lackluster. And Heinz PeterKnes’ seemingly random display of six photographs — the artist’s feet, the rear end of a donkey sculpture,an unfocused wall and other mundane sites — are cryptic to the point of bland illegibility.

------------

China Art Objects, 6086 Comey Ave., Culver City. Through Aug. 20; closed Sundays and Mondays. (323) 965-2264, www.chinaartobjects.com

[email protected]

Twitter: @KnightLAT

ALSO

'London Calling' at the Getty and the tension between abstract and figurative painting

The 'Maverick Modernist' you don't know but should: Peter Krasnow at the Laguna ArtMuseum

'Current: LA' art biennial: Water may be the theme, but gas is what you'll need to see it all

Copyright © 2016, Los Angeles Times


These 20 Female Artists Are Pushing Figurative Painting Forward, by Casey Lesser, Artsy, June 2016

30 Emerging Artists toWatch This SpringREAD FULL ARTICLE

Left: Heidi Hahn, Sadness is a Fulltime Job, 2016; Right: Heidi Hahn, I Take Care of Myself, Piece By Piece, 2016. Images courtesy of the artist and Jack HanleyGallery.

“I think most of the time I’m awful atdepicting people because I want thesummation of their personalities withoutnecessarily including a human form,” saysHahn. Her recent works picture ethereal, attimes ghostly, female figures whose wispyforms float in saturated canvases, caught inmoments of joy or fear—narratives that stem from a longtime passion forreading and writing. “These days I’ve been trying to tell a very specificstory, choosing to portray women in an everyday way without thetrappings of explicit sexuality or artifice,” Hahn says. “The figures areallowed to just be and not perform to classical representations of nudityand provocation.” Hahn has been painting figuratively since her undergradyears at Cooper Union, but only recently gained wide acclaim, following asolo show at Jack Hanley Gallery in New York. For her recent series “ISaw the Future and It Reminded Me of You,” she focused on patternmaking; each painting, of one or two girls, was copiously dotted with tinyflowers. “The repetition of the flower patterns was grueling to adhere toand anxiety-making, but I knew I wanted to paint within that anxietybecause the content called for it.”

Emily Mae Smith �FollowB. 1979, AUSTIN, TEXAS. LIVES AND WORKS IN BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

SHARE ARTICLE

Emily Mae Smith, The Studio, Odalisque, 2016. Photo by Max Slaven. Courtesy of the artist and MaryMary, Glasgow.

ENTER SLIDESHOW

Packing her paintings with nods to Warhol, Lichtenstein, broomstickpeople à la Disney’s Fantasia, or the late Victorian-era art magazine TheStudio, Smith adopts familiar characters and tropes to create glossy,graphic paintings that convey a distinct pop aesthetic. Her work also offerscheeky commentary on issues like gender, capitalism, and violence. “I havealways worked with images, signs, and representations,” Smith says. “Idislike the notion of calling painting ‘figurative’ or ‘abstract,’ as the natureof painting is both at all times. A lot of the bodies in my work have beenfictional, are often objects, or not even human.” In her recent soloexhibition at Mary Mary in Glasgow, Smith presented her series ofrecurring broomstick characters, who appear under different guises andfilters—rendered in Benday Dots, as Warhol’s Double Elvis (1963), or in asensual odalisque pose and psychedelic skin.

—Casey Lesser

� � �

4


Emily Mae Smith, by Charlotte Jansen, Elephant Magazine, Issue 26, Spring 2016

S M I T H 6 5

E M I L Y M A E S M I T H

Roy Lichtenstein. René Magritte. Joe Brainard. Walt Disney. Many ca-nonical names come to mind when looking at the paintings of Emily Mae Smith. But which bit makes us think: Emily Mae Smith? It’s a question the young female painter puts in the frame with her fastidious references to modernism. And she answers it in part, too, by muscling her way into a heavily male art his-tory with her androgynous alter-ego brooms and piercing stiletto heel.

How do you see your work as sitting between abstraction and figuration? I see people using the term ‘figura-tive’ to mean a few different things. Besides referring to an actual body

being depicted, the term is also used to describe artwork that is representational and/or pictorial. I work with images, signs and rep-resentations. My paintings are self-reflexive; they are about the world and they are also about the institu-tion of painting itself. I dislike any notion of dividing figurative and abstract. Paintings are always both things at all times.

How do you set about a new painting?The initial idea for the painting al-most always comes fully formed as an image in my mind. I draw a lot of thumbnail sketches to retain that vi-sion and work out the composition.

Sometimes I do more elaborate renderings to expand on the idea. The image is honed because I try to eliminate anything that is not nec-essary. Sometimes I do some re-search on topics connected to the painting idea and I look for addi-tional source material images.

I have to plan a lot because there are many technical issues with oil painting that must be considered. I draw the composition on the painting following my sketches. Then I start painting in sections and layers. Some parts have to be done before others; some colours are going to determine how other colours look. I spend a lot of time mixing my specific colours. No

matter how much I plan there is still a great-unknown part of making the painting that only happens in the moment of creating it. There are inevitable revisions to the composi-tion and plan. The mechanics of the painting are part technical process, part discovery.

A feminist stance or underlying handling of gender politics has been mentioned in reference to your works. How important is this to you when you go about making your work?It is important to me. I have my subjective and analytic perspective that I create from, like any other human in the world. I feel like a feminist perspective is still sort of

IMA

GE

S C

OU

RT

ES

Y T

HE

AR

TIS

T;

LA

UR

EL

GIT

LE

N,

NE

W Y

OR

K;

MA

RY

MA

RY

, G

LA

SG

OW

Last year was a breakthrough year for Brooklyn-based

E M I LY M A E S M I T H , with a solo show at Laurel Gitlen that

was picked up by Jeffrey Deitch for a subsequent show at Art Basel

Miami Beach, positioning her as one of the painters defining

her generation. Text by C H A R L O T T E J A N S E N .


S M I T H 6 5

E M I L Y M A E S M I T H

Roy Lichtenstein. René Magritte. Joe Brainard. Walt Disney. Many ca-nonical names come to mind when looking at the paintings of Emily Mae Smith. But which bit makes us think: Emily Mae Smith? It’s a question the young female painter puts in the frame with her fastidious references to modernism. And she answers it in part, too, by muscling her way into a heavily male art his-tory with her androgynous alter-ego brooms and piercing stiletto heel.

How do you see your work as sitting between abstraction and figuration? I see people using the term ‘figura-tive’ to mean a few different things. Besides referring to an actual body

being depicted, the term is also used to describe artwork that is representational and/or pictorial. I work with images, signs and rep-resentations. My paintings are self-reflexive; they are about the world and they are also about the institu-tion of painting itself. I dislike any notion of dividing figurative and abstract. Paintings are always both things at all times.

How do you set about a new painting?The initial idea for the painting al-most always comes fully formed as an image in my mind. I draw a lot of thumbnail sketches to retain that vi-sion and work out the composition.

Sometimes I do more elaborate renderings to expand on the idea. The image is honed because I try to eliminate anything that is not nec-essary. Sometimes I do some re-search on topics connected to the painting idea and I look for addi-tional source material images.

I have to plan a lot because there are many technical issues with oil painting that must be considered. I draw the composition on the painting following my sketches. Then I start painting in sections and layers. Some parts have to be done before others; some colours are going to determine how other colours look. I spend a lot of time mixing my specific colours. No

matter how much I plan there is still a great-unknown part of making the painting that only happens in the moment of creating it. There are inevitable revisions to the composi-tion and plan. The mechanics of the painting are part technical process, part discovery.

A feminist stance or underlying handling of gender politics has been mentioned in reference to your works. How important is this to you when you go about making your work?It is important to me. I have my subjective and analytic perspective that I create from, like any other human in the world. I feel like a feminist perspective is still sort of

IMA

GE

S C

OU

RT

ES

Y T

HE

AR

TIS

T;

LA

UR

EL

GIT

LE

N,

NE

W Y

OR

K;

MA

RY

MA

RY

, G

LA

SG

OW

Last year was a breakthrough year for Brooklyn-based

E M I LY M A E S M I T H , with a solo show at Laurel Gitlen that

was picked up by Jeffrey Deitch for a subsequent show at Art Basel

Miami Beach, positioning her as one of the painters defining

her generation. Text by C H A R L O T T E J A N S E N .


6 6 N E W E S T A B L I S H M E N T S M I T H 6 7

alien to painting and therefore nec-essary to it. One never fully knows what transmits; any discovery is good. All I can really know is some (not all) of what I put into it—there is a certain amount that is mysteri-ous to me as well.

When and how did you develop motifs such as your sausagey broom and the teeth that frame some of your images?Both of those started in 2014. They were in my solo show at Junior

Projects that year. The first broom I put in a painting was a riff on the broom character in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. It was a way for me to paint an object, figure, female and phallus all at the same time. I thought it was funny and an ideal vehicle. It doesn’t refer to any other broom at this point; it’s my own thing now. The ideas for my broom figure have changed and expanded since then; it has been moulded to my painting needs. You can say more difficult things with a character. The

broom is my little Tom Thumb, traipsing through ‘Painting’, get-ting into trouble.

The mouth frame also started at the same time. I was studying Art Nouveau illustrations, and noticed how a frame device was often used to contextualize a narrative in those designs. I came up with the mouth/teeth with moustache frame as a way to engender my paintings as ‘male’. It was kind of a joke. But then, as jokes go, there was a truth to it that resonated. These motifs opened

doors and allowed me to paint ideas that otherwise I could not get out.

You’ve got quite a few shows happening in 2016. Would you mind sharing a few of the concepts you’ll be looking at in these shows?Increasingly I am making close-up paintings of my broom’s face—psychological existential portraits. They embody a crisis of seeing and being. My solo show at Mary Mary, Glasgow, will be called Honest Espionage.

Previous pages, left Waiting Room (detail) 2015 Oil on linen 121.9 x 94cm

Previous pages, right The Mirror 2015 Oil on linen 116.8 x 137.2cm

Opposite Over the Shoulder 2015 Oil on linen 96.5 x 76.2cm

Right Big Exit 2015 Oil on linen 96.5 x 68.6cm


Emily Mae Smith, by Laura Phipps and Elisabeth Sherman, CURA #21, 2016

192 HOT!

While informed by the aesthetics of ArtNouveau and the Arts and Crafts Move-ment’s celebration of the artisan, EmilyMae Smith’s painting style is firmly con-temporary, developed in a time when thecomputer is the tool of the craftsperson.Her paintings are populated by fantasti-cal bodies occupying unbelievable lan-dscapes in a style and finish that hasbecome ubiquitous in our digital space.Despite this veneer of technological in-vention and perfection, however, Smithfetishizes the handmade, carefully andobsessively realizing her fantasticalworlds in oil paint, the most traditional ofmediums. She romanticizes the studio asboth a physical location where she la-bors at her paintings and a space whereorigin tales are spun about artworks andtheir creators.

Smith’s signature style – informed bywide ranging influences such as Disneyanimation, graphic design, decorativearts and the Chicago Imagists – is clearand direct, giving each element popula-ting her compositions a communicativepower in its engagement with the viewer.The complexity of her work comes, in-stead, from the myth-making that is cen-tral to the operation of her paintings.While flawlessly constructed, her compo-sitions are pared down to a few relativelykey elements. The use of three funda-

mental devices in each work – portrait,still life, frame – affords Smith three op-portunities to develop the characters anddevices that make up the mythology ofher universe. From the influence of Di-sney fairytales, and the power of thoseoften simple stories, she has developedher own starring character, an anthropo-morphized broom seemingly lifted direc-tly from Fantasia. Rather than faceless,genderless, and in a horde of thousandsof replicas, however, Smith’s broom isoften a singular figure, powerfully aloneand, while still somewhat androgynous,definitively female. A stand-in for not onlySmith herself, but also for the idea of theartist, the female, or the female artist, thebroom importantly acts as the protago-nist in Smith’s scenes.

Using this broom-figure, Smith worksagainst the use of the female body asdecoration or progenitor, as is often thecase in the materials from which sheoften draws her inspiration – the roman-ticized forms of the female body in ArtNouveau or the innocently sexual charac-ters of fairytales – but instead deploysthe female body as an individual agent.Her neutered or transformed figures arenot meant for reproduction or idolationbut for action, be it violent or creative.They turn their gaze directly out at theviewer, unblinkingly staring us down

EMILY MAE SMITH by Laura Phipps

and Elisabeth Sherman


192 HOT!

While informed by the aesthetics of ArtNouveau and the Arts and Crafts Move-ment’s celebration of the artisan, EmilyMae Smith’s painting style is firmly con-temporary, developed in a time when thecomputer is the tool of the craftsperson.Her paintings are populated by fantasti-cal bodies occupying unbelievable lan-dscapes in a style and finish that hasbecome ubiquitous in our digital space.Despite this veneer of technological in-vention and perfection, however, Smithfetishizes the handmade, carefully andobsessively realizing her fantasticalworlds in oil paint, the most traditional ofmediums. She romanticizes the studio asboth a physical location where she la-bors at her paintings and a space whereorigin tales are spun about artworks andtheir creators.

Smith’s signature style – informed bywide ranging influences such as Disneyanimation, graphic design, decorativearts and the Chicago Imagists – is clearand direct, giving each element popula-ting her compositions a communicativepower in its engagement with the viewer.The complexity of her work comes, in-stead, from the myth-making that is cen-tral to the operation of her paintings.While flawlessly constructed, her compo-sitions are pared down to a few relativelykey elements. The use of three funda-

mental devices in each work – portrait,still life, frame – affords Smith three op-portunities to develop the characters anddevices that make up the mythology ofher universe. From the influence of Di-sney fairytales, and the power of thoseoften simple stories, she has developedher own starring character, an anthropo-morphized broom seemingly lifted direc-tly from Fantasia. Rather than faceless,genderless, and in a horde of thousandsof replicas, however, Smith’s broom isoften a singular figure, powerfully aloneand, while still somewhat androgynous,definitively female. A stand-in for not onlySmith herself, but also for the idea of theartist, the female, or the female artist, thebroom importantly acts as the protago-nist in Smith’s scenes.

Using this broom-figure, Smith worksagainst the use of the female body asdecoration or progenitor, as is often thecase in the materials from which sheoften draws her inspiration – the roman-ticized forms of the female body in ArtNouveau or the innocently sexual charac-ters of fairytales – but instead deploysthe female body as an individual agent.Her neutered or transformed figures arenot meant for reproduction or idolationbut for action, be it violent or creative.They turn their gaze directly out at theviewer, unblinkingly staring us down

EMILY MAE SMITH by Laura Phipps

and Elisabeth Sherman


HOT! 195

Scr

eam

, 201

5 (o

pp

osi

te p

age)

Th

e S

tud

io (

Bro

om

and

Mu

shro

om

), 20

15 (

p. 1

93)

All

imag

es C

ou

rtes

y: t

he

arti

st

while they placidly engage in seeminglybanal, yet powerful activities. Like thebroom in The Studio (Seance) (2015),who levitates cross legged while holdinga paintbrush and seems to be the masterof her universe, many of these avatarsmanage to be violent, humorous, andstrong while doing almost nothing at all.

Beyond simply feminine agency, Smithalso challenges gendered framing andthe male gaze, endorsing the desire tomake both obsolete. Smith includes amustache in many of her paintings, hid-den within painted frames, decorating thefaces of her otherwise female figures, oras a floating still life element all on itsown. These mustaches often appear likecomedic flourishes, like a set of GrouchoMarx glasses. They imply masculinity, andits dominance in the history of painting,while at once overriding it and dimini-shing it to a punchline. While in Over theShoulder (2015) the mustache lords overan aggressively open mouth that con-tains imagery of a stiletto heel injuring acartoonish tongue – the male aggressioncontaining overtly feminine dominance –in Scream (2015) the mustache hangslimply in the hand of the broom and iserased from the painted frame – a signof the impotence of gendered readings.

Beyond simply criticizing myths and fai-rytales for their casting of women as ob-jects devoid of agency and action, Smith,almost contradictorily, steals from fairyta-les and myths the romance central totheir power. For her, however, romance isnot the subject of her works but the mi-lieu in which they are born. Even today,the romance of “the studio” proves insi-dious. The pervasive image is of a magi-cal place where visionary works arecreated and the artist stokes and tends

to their own imaginings, taking only whatthey desire from the world just outsidethe walls. Mirages of drafty garrets inParis or airy lofts in Manhattan are persi-stent despite their being oft replaced bythe computer screen and coffee shop. Si-milarly, the romance of the handmade isthat the unique object speaks to the per-sonality or culture of the individual thatproduced it. This history, however falseand clichéd, is the softening light throughwhich Smith’s biting critiques are seen, alittle sugar helping the medicine godown.


Emily Mae Smith, studio visit, brooklyn, interview by MAURIZIO CATTELAN, portrait by ALEX ANTITCH, Purple Magazine, S/S2016, issue 25

Emily Mae Smith, by Barry Schwabsky, ArtForum, December 2015

Emily Mae Smith- Galleries Downtown, The New Yorker, October 26, 2015

Emily Mae Smith, by Natalie Musteate, ArtForum, 2015

Emily Mae Smith, by Nora Griffin, Art in America, November 2015

Waiting Room presents a close-up of a broom, the bristles trans-formed into long blonde hair. Wearing glasses with numberless clock-faces, the head appears to lean back against a yellow-purple gradient resembling venetian blinds. The luscious lips and coifed hair identify the face as feminine. The complexity of the description belies the work’s visual simplicity. It can be digested quickly as an image, but it can also be savored for its indeterminate psychology. The same figure fills the canvas in Still Life. Here one eyeglass reflects (or projects?) a glistening ice cube and a cherry with a phallic stem. Conveyed with the fetish perfection of ’80s advertising, the little scene is intoxicating to behold and carries an intimation of mortality, reminiscent of Dutch vanitas paintings.

The one work without a broom, Over the Shoulder, shows a stiletto heel piercing a pink tongue, held taut by the lethal point. The violence is rendered more obscene by the cartoonish abstraction of the forms and the gorgeous periwinkle background. The scene is framed by an outline that doubles as a wide-open mouth, white squares at the top and bottom representing teeth. A handlebar mustache above the mouth, a recurring character in Smith’s work, slyly points to the male persona that is synonymous with the history of painting.

In the quietly shocking Medusa, a tangled mass of green snak-ing atop a broom handle sharply contrasts with a background fade of bright red to hot pink. Smith subverts the Greek myth of this female monster, who turned men to stone when they looked in her eyes, by portraying her as eyeless. In tandem with the other works on view, the painting embodies the psychodrama of seeing and being seen that women artists face when engaging with the legacies of modernism.

—Nora Griffin

EMILY MAE SMITHLaurel GitlenEmily Mae Smith’s first solo show at Laurel Gitlen, titled “Medusa,” pumped new blood into the ongoing conversation that many contempo-rary artists have with Pop art, in particular its glamour finish and populist appeal. The crisply imagined paintings reference classic animation, art his-tory, mythology and science-fiction kitsch. After a 2014 breakout show at Junior Projects on the Lower East Side, the young Brooklyn-based artist was included in prominent group exhibitions in New York and Europe.

Most of the seven oil-on-linen works (all 2015) measure 48 by 37 inches, an ideal portrait size. Smith compellingly integrates bold graphic design with the luminous surfaces of oil paint. Virtuosic technique is tempered by an absurdist humor that activates and personalizes her work. Cartoonish brooms figuring in many of the paintings are recognizable from the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence of Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia. The broom, in various guises, becomes a surrogate for the artist as well as a sym-bol for the enchanted modality of the studio, a space that exerts tremendous force over its occupant’s desires and fears.

In The Mirror, simple black lines on a cadmium yellow background depict a group of brooms lounging around a giant red-framed hand mirror in the middle of the canvas. Black and white dots in Lichtenstein’s iconic benday style compose its reflective oval surface. The centrality of the mirror creates the effect of looking at imagery by Smith and by Lichtenstein at the same time—a doubling that is complexly pleasurable. References to art history are more subtly folded into other works. The puffy clouds partly occluded by red bricks in Scream evoke René Magritte, as does the filigree rendition of twin moons in pink and blue in View-finder. In each painting, an anthropomorphic broom handle is depicted in a stance elucidating the title.

EXHIBITION REVIEWSNOVEMBER 2015

Emily Mae Smith: Medusa, 2015, oil on linen, 38 by 27 inches; at Laurel Gitlen.

Waiting Room presents a close-up of a broom, the bristles trans-formed into long blonde hair. Wearing glasses with numberless clock-faces, the head appears to lean back against a yellow-purple gradient resembling venetian blinds. The luscious lips and coifed hair identify the face as feminine. The complexity of the description belies the work’s visual simplicity. It can be digested quickly as an image, but it can also be savored for its indeterminate psychology. The same figure fills the canvas in Still Life. Here one eyeglass reflects (or projects?) a glistening ice cube and a cherry with a phallic stem. Conveyed with the fetish perfection of ’80s advertising, the little scene is intoxicating to behold and carries an intimation of mortality, reminiscent of Dutch vanitas paintings.

The one work without a broom, Over the Shoulder, shows a stiletto heel piercing a pink tongue, held taut by the lethal point. The violence is rendered more obscene by the cartoonish abstraction of the forms and the gorgeous periwinkle background. The scene is framed by an outline that doubles as a wide-open mouth, white squares at the top and bottom representing teeth. A handlebar mustache above the mouth, a recurring character in Smith’s work, slyly points to the male persona that is synonymous with the history of painting.

In the quietly shocking Medusa, a tangled mass of green snak-ing atop a broom handle sharply contrasts with a background fade of bright red to hot pink. Smith subverts the Greek myth of this female monster, who turned men to stone when they looked in her eyes, by portraying her as eyeless. In tandem with the other works on view, the painting embodies the psychodrama of seeing and being seen that women artists face when engaging with the legacies of modernism.

—Nora Griffin

EMILY MAE SMITHLaurel GitlenEmily Mae Smith’s first solo show at Laurel Gitlen, titled “Medusa,” pumped new blood into the ongoing conversation that many contempo-rary artists have with Pop art, in particular its glamour finish and populist appeal. The crisply imagined paintings reference classic animation, art his-tory, mythology and science-fiction kitsch. After a 2014 breakout show at Junior Projects on the Lower East Side, the young Brooklyn-based artist was included in prominent group exhibitions in New York and Europe.

Most of the seven oil-on-linen works (all 2015) measure 48 by 37 inches, an ideal portrait size. Smith compellingly integrates bold graphic design with the luminous surfaces of oil paint. Virtuosic technique is tempered by an absurdist humor that activates and personalizes her work. Cartoonish brooms figuring in many of the paintings are recognizable from the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence of Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia. The broom, in various guises, becomes a surrogate for the artist as well as a sym-bol for the enchanted modality of the studio, a space that exerts tremendous force over its occupant’s desires and fears.

In The Mirror, simple black lines on a cadmium yellow background depict a group of brooms lounging around a giant red-framed hand mirror in the middle of the canvas. Black and white dots in Lichtenstein’s iconic benday style compose its reflective oval surface. The centrality of the mirror creates the effect of looking at imagery by Smith and by Lichtenstein at the same time—a doubling that is complexly pleasurable. References to art history are more subtly folded into other works. The puffy clouds partly occluded by red bricks in Scream evoke René Magritte, as does the filigree rendition of twin moons in pink and blue in View-finder. In each painting, an anthropomorphic broom handle is depicted in a stance elucidating the title.

EXHIBITION REVIEWSNOVEMBER 2015

Emily Mae Smith: Medusa, 2015, oil on linen, 38 by 27 inches; at Laurel Gitlen.

Sex On Paper, curated by Mathew Cerletty, Kaleidoscope, December, 2015

Emily Mae Smith: Medusa’ at Laurel Gitlen, Art News, 2015

Emily Mae Smith: ‘Novelty Court’, by Ken Johnson, The New York Times, July 7, 2014

9/4/14, 12:59 PMEmily Mae Smith: ‘Novelty Court’ - NYTimes.com

Page 1 of 1http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/arts/design/emily-mae-smith-novelty-court.html?_r=0

http://nyti.ms/1n1wIIY

ART & DESIGN

Emily Mae Smith: ‘Novelty Court’By KEN JOHNSON JULY 7, 2014

Bucking the messy abstraction trend, Emily Mae Smith’s Pop-style paintingscomment on sex and gender with satirical ingenuity. Two posterlike works onview in this pint-size gallery mimic the cover of The Studio, a late-Victorian artmagazine, with the title lettered at the top and the Art Nouveau-style image of afemale artist painting in her studio rendered in thin black lines on whitegrounds. To each of these genteel images, Ms. Smith has added the realistic,semi-transparent color image of a much-enlarged piece of fruit — a banana and atomato — highlighting the idea of the woman as a desirable commodity.

Three smaller and funnier paintings take aim at masculinity. Each has ahandlebar mustache painted at the top, and rows of small white squares, liketeeth, lining the picture’s upper and lower edges. This makes the whole pictureinto a man’s wide-open mouth, which serves, in turn, as a frame for otherimagery, like the pink buttocks accented by a monocle in “The Inspector.”“Tongues and Coin” has pink tycoon tongues reaching out to catch falling silvercoins. A just-fired gun barrel rises from the bottom edge in “Smoking Gun.”

There’s a sense of personal import in these works that might have as muchto do with the artist’s own psychic conflicts as with sexual politics in general. Theexhibition’s biggest and most promising painting is a self-portrait as the magicbroom from Disney’s “Fantasia.” Leaning against the inner edge of a floral-patterned Art Nouveau border and nonchalantly smoking a cigarette, thisandrogynous, mop-haired figure defies the world’s usual categorical imperativewith exemplary élan.

Junior Projects

139 Norfolk Street, Lower East Side

Through July 6

A version of this review appears in print on June 27, 2014, on page C24 of the New York edition with theheadline: Emily Mae Smith: ‘Novelty Court’.

© 2014 The New York Times Company

Emily Mae Smith- Junior Projects, Nathaniel Lee, Art Forum, June 2014

9/4/14, 1:12 PMartforum.com / critics' picks

Page 13 of 23http://artforum.com/picks/section=nyc&mode=past#picks47352

Emily Mae SmithJUNIOR PROJECTS139 Norfolk StreetJune 8–July 31In “Novelty Court,” Emily Mae Smith presents paintings thatemploy a personalized iconography as a means towardunabashed self-assertion and its liberatory effects. For themost part, the motifs in these canvases are proprietary, culledfrom sources ranging from the Art Nouveau trade bulletin TheStudio to Disney’s Fantasia, and they are fed by the artist’srobust interest in the history of design. Ghost Writer (all works2014) is an extreme case, a painting which repeats the letterE five times in black paint on a white background; the middlebar of the letter, which would complete the character, hasbeen replaced by a two-hued blue wave. Here, Smith alludesto herself through a corporatized logo, reformulating the spiritof Kurt Schwitters’s “Merz” series in the corporate graphicparlance of Microsoft’s Windows.

One conspicuous element that appears in three smallpaintings features a man’s toothy rictus as a framing device.The mouth reads as male because there is a handlebarmustache painted directly above it, and because of thegaping Chiclet teeth centered above and below the picture.For instance, in The Inspector, the teeth circumscribe asimplified image of a cartoonish backside. Hovering abovethe right cheek is a monocle, which brings to mind eyeglasses and other sight aids deployed by artists—from Pieter Brueghel the Elder to Jasper Johns—as iconographic code to mock myopic art critics. In thiscase, Smith adds a wry jab at the insatiable male gaze. Are we all really so obtuse and ass-hungry?Maybe. This type of graphic sophistication and screwball humor forms an incisive critique in its own rightas it circumvents any dominant mode of picture-making in favor of singular intelligence and eccentricity.

— Nathaniel Lee

Emily Mae Smith, The Inspector, 2014, acrylicon linen, 14 x 11”.

PERMALINK COMMENTS (0 COMMENTS) PRINT

Patricia EsquiviasMURRAY GUY453 West 17th StreetJune 12–August 1Probing the relationship between historical preservation andindividual memory, Patricia Esquivias’s film 111-119Generalísimo/Castellana, 2014, traces stories around a1950s housing project in Madrid’s current-day financialdistrict. Much of the film focuses on ceramic murals originallyinstalled for the balconies of the buildings; each mural depictsa different city around Europe, the intent during Franco’sreign being to project an image of Spain as a thriving,international state. Many were removed over time, somesalvaged pieces of which are on view along with photographsand texts in this exhibition that, together with the video,constructs a historical narrative that oscillates between whatis personal and what is factual.

The film depicts the artist’s laptop screen, showing heropening and switching between various image files. The disjointed slideshow establishes that her interestin the housing development hearkens back to time spent with her father, hinting that her concern withfacts is also viewed through a lens of rekindled childhood imaginations. One narrative references arefashioned marble wall element that appears to have originally resembled a seashore—the artist jokesthat perhaps residents’ fond memories from holidays at the beach will instigate the piece’s restoration. In aprinted text, Esquivias retells how a renter decided against destroying his ceramic mural after hearing ofthe artist’s interest in the object.

Documents displayed on tables further illustrate the artist’s efforts to uncover the buildings’ histories,which included meeting with families of the architects and thwarted attempts to photograph more tiles.The artist’s anecdotes and research foretell how objects and surroundings receive value throughcircumstances perhaps as fickle as they are personal. Esquivias’s own instructive approach mirrors this

View of “111-119 Generalísimo/Castellana,”2014.



login register ADVERTISE BACK ISSUES CONTACT US SUBSCRIBE searchfollow us

ARTGUIDE IN PRINT 500 WORDS PREVIEWS BOOKFORUM A & E

DIARY PICKS NEWS VIDEO FILM PASSAGES SLANT

CRITICS' PICKS

New YorkLen LyeSarah CharlesworthAndrei KoschmiederRy RocklenRebecca HornSanya KantarovskyJorinde VoigtBill JenkinsKristan Kennedy“Ephemera as Evidence”“When the Stars Begin toFall: Imagination and theAmerican South”Jason LoebsNancy Grossman“With Hidden Noise”Kara Walker“Witness”“Supports/Surfaces”Louise Lawler“Slip”Hervé GuibertIsrael LundEmily Mae SmithPatricia Esquivias“The View from theWindow”“DTR”“Other Primary Structures”“Pleh”Christoph SchlingensiefCharles JamesZoe Beloff“Living with Pop. AReproduction of CapitalistRealism”Matthew RonayJerry Kearns“City as Canvas: GraffitiArt from the Martin WongCollection”“Ultrapassado”“13 Most Wanted Men”James Lee ByarsNancy RubinsTrisha BrownCharles Gaines

Los AngelesJacob HashimotoHiroshi SugimotoAgnès VardaNathan Mabry

CURRENT PASTNew YorkLen LyeTHE DRAWING CENTER35 Wooster StreetApril 17–June 8A well-established figure in the history of experimentalcinema, Len Lye’s stature in art history, especially as a cruciallink between the early avant-garde of animation and mid-century modernism, has not been properly championed in theUnited States. This new exhibition makes significant stridestowards rectifying that, as well as introducing a body ofdrawings, paintings, and memorably mysterious photogramsnever before exhibited, along with documentation of hiskinetic sculptures. The foundation of Lye’s practice, whichbegan in the 1920s and continued all the way until his deathin 1980, was to visually convey the feeling of motion,primarily constructed with lines, as in his series of elevensmall pencil drawings, “Sketch for Motion Composition,”1938. Bold, unfussy marks congregate and crosshatch,elongating into dervish-like forms with each successivedrawing, in tune with his fantastical sketches for monumentalsculptures nearby encased that had to wait for technology tocatch up to their ingenuity.

A looping selection of the artist’s short films takes over thedownstairs gallery. Anticipating Stan Brakhage by decades,films such as A Colour Box, 1935, and Trade Tattoo, 1937,pioneered direct filmmaking with their complex printing, color grading, and direct-drawing techniques. Inthe latter, utilizing black-and-white outtakes from the British General Post Office’s Film Unit’sdocumentaries, Lye transforms through sprightly editing, racing patterns, and a Cuban orchestra scorewhat was once excess footage of labor into a superb modernist work. The film is an exuberant declarationof the accumulative beauty and civic virtue of industry circulating across land and sea, flashing suchdeclarations as “The rhythm of trade is maintained by the mails” before cutting to a train speeding by inthe night, abstract shapes bopping and dashing across the composition, and colors exploding likefireworks. With straightforward intentions and a clear premise, Len Lye created work far ahead of its timeand deserving of ours now.

— Paige K. Bradley

Len Lye, Ann Lye, 1947, photogram, 15 9/10 x13".


Sarah CharlesworthMACCARONE INC.630 Greenwich StreetApril 25–June 14Polished pictures of a floating world, Sarah Charlesworth’sseries “Objects of Desire,” 1983–88, once aptly injectedbeauty where it didn’t belong—deconstruction,postmodernism, Conceptualism—and inspired her peers andlater generations to do the same. The images have aged verywell. Today, these key works by the late artist come togetheras potent omens for our decontexualized image glut andherald her own long-standing interests—gender, politics,

links



login register ADVERTISE BACK ISSUES CONTACT US SUBSCRIBE searchfollow us

ARTGUIDE IN PRINT 500 WORDS PREVIEWS BOOKFORUM A & E

DIARY PICKS NEWS VIDEO FILM PASSAGES SLANT

CRITICS' PICKS

New YorkLen LyeSarah CharlesworthAndrei KoschmiederRy RocklenRebecca HornSanya KantarovskyJorinde VoigtBill JenkinsKristan Kennedy“Ephemera as Evidence”“When the Stars Begin toFall: Imagination and theAmerican South”Jason LoebsNancy Grossman“With Hidden Noise”Kara Walker“Witness”“Supports/Surfaces”Louise Lawler“Slip”Hervé GuibertIsrael LundEmily Mae SmithPatricia Esquivias“The View from theWindow”“DTR”“Other Primary Structures”“Pleh”Christoph SchlingensiefCharles JamesZoe Beloff“Living with Pop. AReproduction of CapitalistRealism”Matthew RonayJerry Kearns“City as Canvas: GraffitiArt from the Martin WongCollection”“Ultrapassado”“13 Most Wanted Men”James Lee ByarsNancy RubinsTrisha BrownCharles Gaines

Los AngelesJacob HashimotoHiroshi SugimotoAgnès VardaNathan Mabry

CURRENT PASTNew YorkLen LyeTHE DRAWING CENTER35 Wooster StreetApril 17–June 8A well-established figure in the history of experimentalcinema, Len Lye’s stature in art history, especially as a cruciallink between the early avant-garde of animation and mid-century modernism, has not been properly championed in theUnited States. This new exhibition makes significant stridestowards rectifying that, as well as introducing a body ofdrawings, paintings, and memorably mysterious photogramsnever before exhibited, along with documentation of hiskinetic sculptures. The foundation of Lye’s practice, whichbegan in the 1920s and continued all the way until his deathin 1980, was to visually convey the feeling of motion,primarily constructed with lines, as in his series of elevensmall pencil drawings, “Sketch for Motion Composition,”1938. Bold, unfussy marks congregate and crosshatch,elongating into dervish-like forms with each successivedrawing, in tune with his fantastical sketches for monumentalsculptures nearby encased that had to wait for technology tocatch up to their ingenuity.

A looping selection of the artist’s short films takes over thedownstairs gallery. Anticipating Stan Brakhage by decades,films such as A Colour Box, 1935, and Trade Tattoo, 1937,pioneered direct filmmaking with their complex printing, color grading, and direct-drawing techniques. Inthe latter, utilizing black-and-white outtakes from the British General Post Office’s Film Unit’sdocumentaries, Lye transforms through sprightly editing, racing patterns, and a Cuban orchestra scorewhat was once excess footage of labor into a superb modernist work. The film is an exuberant declarationof the accumulative beauty and civic virtue of industry circulating across land and sea, flashing suchdeclarations as “The rhythm of trade is maintained by the mails” before cutting to a train speeding by inthe night, abstract shapes bopping and dashing across the composition, and colors exploding likefireworks. With straightforward intentions and a clear premise, Len Lye created work far ahead of its timeand deserving of ours now.

— Paige K. Bradley

Len Lye, Ann Lye, 1947, photogram, 15 9/10 x13".


Sarah CharlesworthMACCARONE INC.630 Greenwich StreetApril 25–June 14Polished pictures of a floating world, Sarah Charlesworth’sseries “Objects of Desire,” 1983–88, once aptly injectedbeauty where it didn’t belong—deconstruction,postmodernism, Conceptualism—and inspired her peers andlater generations to do the same. The images have aged verywell. Today, these key works by the late artist come togetheras potent omens for our decontexualized image glut andherald her own long-standing interests—gender, politics,

links