Timothy Taylor Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new work by internationally acclaimed artist Kiki Smith. Chuck Close described her as “one of our greatest artists” in a recent feature by Time magazine on ‘100 People who shape our world’. Her first solo show in the UK since 1997 will be the inaugural exhibition in the new Timothy Taylor Gallery space at 21 Dering Street. Almost ten years on the show will consist of recently completed sculpture, drawings and etchings, and will reveal a noticeable progression away from investigations of the corporeal, towards a more mystical examination of spiritual relationships with the wider cosmos. Whereas her earlier work dealt with mortality and the dichotomy between the psychological and physiological power of the body, this new work is a celebration of life and the universe.
Although Kiki still has a fascination with the female form, she is now looking at the body from a new vantage point, referencing fairytales, folklore, religious iconography and cosmology. Nature and the relationship between humans and the natural world is also a subject of this exhibition. Kiki is carrying on the tradition of her father Tony Smith’s contemporaries Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois with her exploration of female and organic forms using experimental materials including beeswax, glass, ceramic, fabric and paper, and a variety of methods such as sculpture, sewing, appliqué, photography and etching. With this exhibition Kiki continues to use techniques as varied as printmaking, drawing and sculpting with material as diverse as paper, ink, bronze and mica.
A group of photolithographic prints depict magnificent women lounging in celestial heavens. These are a form of ‘drawing with paper’, using handmade Nepalese paper to give the prints a material sensuousness. The drawings are first printed, then collaged and hand-painted. An appliqué process is used to adhere Mica flakes and silver leaf to create silver stars, fluorescent moths, glowing tattoos and other cosmological motifs. Both a celebration of the female form and a study of human’s relationship with the universe, the drawings are innocent and magical.
The theme of nature is continued with a group of bronze wall relief sculptures of birds, individual and in groups resting on fallen trees, and an ejaculating snake, which are representative of a cosmic mandala.
Also on display will be ‘Touch’ (2006) a set of six new colour etchings and aquatints of dying flowers published by Harlan & Weaver in New York. The portfolio includes a poem by the poet Henri Cole, commissioned especially for this print.
Kiki Smith was born in 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany. She studied at Hartford Art School, Connecticut (1974-6) and in 1985 trained as an emergency medical technician. She lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions include; Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980–2005, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, November 2005–January 2006, which travelled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis in 2006; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, July-September 2006; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 2006–February 2007; Kiki Smith: Homespun Tales. Storie di occupazione domestica, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, 51st Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2005); Kiki Smith: Prints, Books and Things, The Museum of Modern Art, Queens, New York (2004); Kiki Smith: Realms, PaceWildenstein, New York (2002); Whitney Museum of American Art (1997); Kiki Smith, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1995); Public collections include; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Tate Gallery, London, England and Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England.
Timothy Taylor Gallery is at 21 and 24 Dering Street, London, W1S 1TT. Open 10-6pm Mon-Fri; 10-1pm Sat. For further information please contact Lee Johnson. Tel: 020 7409 3344 or
e: [email protected]
