Over the course of her career, iconic American artist Kiki Smith  (*1954) has produced a multi-layered body of work exploring the  sociopolitical, philosophical, and spiritual dimensions of human nature.  Her investigations of the body, the female body in particular, propose  discourses of the human condition—the conditio humana. Her  works address core themes from aging, death and dying, to wounding and  healing, reanimation, pregnancy, birth, sexuality, gender, identity, and  memory. While largely sculptural, Smith’s oeuvre employs a range of  mediums, most notably drawing, etching, and lithography, as well as  photography and video. Her early works were influenced by the sudden  shifts in political, social, and cultural conditions—brought on in part  by the AIDS epidemic, changing discourses on sexual identity and social  gender, and the impacts of feminist activism. Since the early 1990s  Smith’s work has also incorporated themes referencing history,  mythology, legends, fairy tales, and religious traditions. Her pictorial  interventions, her radicalism, and the magic of her materials not only  make her work unique, but continue to influence a younger generation of  artists.   
In its first exhibition with Kiki Smith, Galerie Thomas Schulte  presents a selection of works created in the last twenty years,  showcasing the artist‘s signature use of an abundance of materials:  sculptures in patinated bronze and aluminum, paintings on glass with  gold leaf, ink drawings on Nepalese paper, copperplate intaglio with  collages. Kiki Smith‘s focus has broadened during this time to include a  perception of a larger context: her works now address human  relationships to animals, nature, and the environment. Thus, the  exhibition reveals an entire universe: floating celestial bodies made of  aluminum, including works like Moon, Stars and Cloud (2011) and Spiral Nebula (2017), or bronze stars (Sungrazer, 2018); an over six meter long collage of celestial constellations Noctua, the owl, Corvus, the crow, Hydra, the water snake, Filis, the cat (2013); bronze birds, as her animals of choice (39 Standing Birds, 2006; Eagle in the Pines, 2017), and trees, drawn and printed. Included in this cosmos is the Woman, seen as a painting on glass, Reminiscent (2011), and as a standing nude figure in aluminum, supported by bronze „crutches,“ which inspires the title of the exhibition: Red Standing Moon (2003).   
Smith’s works contain dualities between themes of lightness, beauty,  balance, and harmony, and those of endangerment and vulnerability. As  she describes, “we are part of the natural world, and our identity is  completely attached to our relationship to our habitat and animals. I am  making images for things I think merit attention“. She speaks of the  possibility of “resurrection” and “regeneration”: “I think hope can only  have meaning or be realized through action. Consequently, hope requires  action, otherwise it’s just a static idea.“   
— Petra Giloy-Hirtz, curator of the exhibition