Description:
American artist Kiki Smith first received international attention in the 1980s with her sculptures and drawings of the human body. Since the beginning of the 1990s, however, she has expanded her visual vocabulary to include works that portray the larger natural world and its phenomena, such as plants and animals, stars and planets. The daughter of minimalist artist Tony Smith, she has drawn a good deal of her inspiration from the techniques and materials of past epochs, especially from traditions within the decorative arts-and-crafts movements of various world cultures. She uses a wide variety of lush and often ephemeral materials to create her pieces--bronze, gold, silver, paper, wax, glass, felt, ceramics, video, and neon among them. And she combines figuration and abstraction to explore such themes as the vulnerability and reanimation of that which is lost or dead. Smith's pieces, which draw on fables, myths, fairy tales, dreams, and her own Catholic spirituality, evoke in viewers contemplation and a desire for greater perception. Kiki Smith: All Creatures Great and Small brings together works from different periods of Smith's production over the past two decades. At 140 pages, this small, elegant hardcover (approximately eight by six inches) includes 54 color reproductions and a poetic text by Carsten Ahrens. --A.C. Smith
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