NEW YORK.- The Museum of Modern Art presents Kiki Smith: Prints, Books, and Things, the first New York museum survey of the artist’s achievement in the field of printed art, through March 8, 2004, at MoMA QNS. Best known as a sculptor, Smith has also achieved recognition as an innovative printmaker whose works have expanded the scope of the medium. Spanning the last two decades of Smith’s career, the exhibition features more than 150 prints, books, and multiples. This exhibition is organized by Wendy Weitman, Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art.
The work included ranges from elaborate wall-sized lithographs, intricate etchings, and deluxe livres d’artiste (books with original prints by artists), to screenprinted fabrics, posters, and temporary tattoos. Arranged thematically around recurring motifs in Smith’s work, the exhibition begins with a section on her “Early Screenprints” and follows with galleries devoted to the themes of “Anatomy,” “Self-Portraits,” “Nature,” and “Feminine Contexts.” Themes of the body, her own identity, and images from nature permeate Smith’s career in works that conflate beautiful materials and forms with confrontational subjects. Recently a strong interest in storytelling and a nostalgia for childhood appears in works that reinvent myths and fairy tales from a feminine perspective.
Since the mid-1980s, printmaking has been a vital part of Smith’s career, and she has collaborated with numerous print workshops and university facilities. She thrives on the communal nature of the printshop, an environment similar to that of a sculpture foundry, where skilled craftsmen work in tandem with the artist. She has worked with a diverse group of printers from around the New York area, including Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), Harlan & Weaver, Inc., Pace Editions, Inc., and Columbia University, and elsewhere, including The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia and Carpe Diem Press in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Smith’s experience as a sculptor has led her to take a physical, often unconventional approach to printmaking, frequently using her own body to imprint images onto plates and stones. Her use of paper as a sculptural medium has also inspired her inventiveness with prints. Ms. Weitman says: “Kiki Smith is among the most prolific and committed artists to use the printed medium as a creative outlet. She has already achieved a place among the crucial voices of the contemporary period. Her passion for and facility with paper, a material she has explored extensively in sculpture, has fueled her innovative endeavors in prints and books, resulting in intricately folded and layered compositions of delicate handmade sheets.”
The exhibition features some newly finished works including Come Away from Her (after Lewis Carroll) (2003), one in a series of prints based on Lewis Carroll’s drawings for his manuscript Alice’s Adventures under Ground; and Hunters and Gatherers (2003), a book of haikus by Susanna Moore featuring seven etchings by Smith. Several earlier works never before seen in New York include a partial recreation of Peabody (Animal Drawings) (1996), a floor piece consisting of multiple layers of etchings on handmade Nepalese paper. Wallpaper recently designed by Smith will be installed in the Museum’s lobby, the first time it will be installed in a museum.
For the exhibition’s catalogue, Smith created the eight-page insert Full, accompanied by an original poem by John Coletti.
