Michael E. Smith
02 Mar - 21 May 2018
Installation view, Michael E. Smith, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
MICHAEL E. SMITH
2 March – 21 May 2018
Opening Thu, March 1, 2018, 7 pm
Michael E. Smith (*1977) works with discarded things, resonant with the accumulated traces of their existence, and transformed through the simplest of gestures into captivating, uncannily sentient sculptures. For his first solo exhibition in Switzerland, the Detroit-born artist creates new works that expand his peculiar archaeology of humanity in the 21st century.
Door, birds, fleece robes, laser, drill: at once too generic to give away much, and too specific to be arbitrary, Michael E. Smith’s material lists read almost as if concrete poetry. The artworks made from these ele- ments have a macabre wit to them, humorous and tragic, loaded and light at the same time. The artist works with discarded things, resonant with the accumulated traces of their existence, and transformed through the simplest of gestures into captivating, uncannily sentient sculptures. For his first solo exhibition in Switzerland, Smith creates a peculiar, minimal show. Yet his is not emp- tiness refined into chic minimalism, but instead a sparseness that commands the space and speaks with dystopian pathos about the human condition in our present moment.
Michael E. Smith was born in 1977 in Detroit, USA; he lives and works in Providence, USA.
2 March – 21 May 2018
Opening Thu, March 1, 2018, 7 pm
Michael E. Smith (*1977) works with discarded things, resonant with the accumulated traces of their existence, and transformed through the simplest of gestures into captivating, uncannily sentient sculptures. For his first solo exhibition in Switzerland, the Detroit-born artist creates new works that expand his peculiar archaeology of humanity in the 21st century.
Door, birds, fleece robes, laser, drill: at once too generic to give away much, and too specific to be arbitrary, Michael E. Smith’s material lists read almost as if concrete poetry. The artworks made from these ele- ments have a macabre wit to them, humorous and tragic, loaded and light at the same time. The artist works with discarded things, resonant with the accumulated traces of their existence, and transformed through the simplest of gestures into captivating, uncannily sentient sculptures. For his first solo exhibition in Switzerland, Smith creates a peculiar, minimal show. Yet his is not emp- tiness refined into chic minimalism, but instead a sparseness that commands the space and speaks with dystopian pathos about the human condition in our present moment.
Michael E. Smith was born in 1977 in Detroit, USA; he lives and works in Providence, USA.