The Most Iconic Artists of the 1990s
Artsy Editorial
Courtesy of the Artist and Pace Gallery.
Kiki Smith’s “Mind’s Eye” is an ongoing edition of two isolated eyes. From each iris six lines fan out, roughly equidistant and extending onto the blank part of the page, while a pattern in yellow ocher overlays both eyes. This design resembles an animal pelt, and renders the composition a hybrid chimera, neither fully human nor entirely animal. Smith often depicts subjects whose liminal position between the otherworldly and natural evidence her preoccupation with folklore, spirituality, and modes of introspection, a theme suggested by the work’s title. Smith had a solo exhibition at The Kitchen in 1983 and has participated in numerous group shows here since. –Courtesy of The Kitchen
Open edition variee. Framed, framed dimensions: 12 1/8 x 15 1/2 inches
Signature: Recto, bottom right
Using a multitude of mediums and materials, Kiki Smith’s collections are meditations on life and spirituality, often featuring narratives about origins and endings. For the installation Pilgrim (2007-2010), Smith created nearly 30 panels of black and white stained glass supported by steel frames, each representing a stage in a woman’s life and evoking the stations of a pilgrimage. Smith has worked extensively in glass, from the molded sculpture of entangled spermatozoa in Untitled (1989–1990) to the rose window of the Eldridge Street Synagogue (2010) in New York City’s Lower East Side.
American, b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany, based in New York, New York