Kiki Smith

Smith, who began her career in the late 1980s, is celebrated for her materially wide-ranging practice exploring the interconnection of the human body and the natural world. Throughout sculpture, drawing, glasswork, printmaking, and textile, among other forms, Smith’s work takes both a spiritual and psychologically charged approach to ideas of mortality, regeneration, and gender politics. Smith is deeply inspired by the visual culture of the past, from eighteenth- century scientific anatomical renderings to the imagery of relics, memento mori, folklore, mythology, Byzantine iconography, and medieval altarpieces.

Describing his first encounters with the artist, Pace founder Arne Glimcher says: “Having represented Tony Smith for many years, I met Kiki as a young woman assisting her father in the construction of the models for his works. Little did I realize then that she would become so influential an artist, at the forefront of a new movement expressing identity and the temporal nature of life through an investigation of the body and its internal and external parts.”

Thought-provoking and at times unsettling, these sculptures are placed in conversation with a selection of multimedia wall-mounted works that also engage themes of humanity. At their heart is a tension between the public—a “body” of people—and the private. “I always think the whole history of the world is in your body,” Smith has said. In part, her works think through what becomes internalized and, as in the cast aluminum diptych Untitled (Skin) (1992), what is reflected externally. In the process she negotiates archetypes of femininity, as in the stained-glass installation Sybills (2005), as well as understandings of collectivity, illustrated by the strings connecting the figures in an untitled paper work from 1993. Smith’s works depicting animals and the natural world also feature in this exhibition, from recent bronze sculptures of owls and goats—beings whose portrayals are laden with symbolic meaning and whose images frequently reoccur in her oeuvre—to large-scale paper works that embrace the sweep of the cosmos. Stars and Scat (1996), a large blue expanse of Nepalese paper dotted with Schott crystal stars and bronze pellets installed on the floor, exemplifies Smith’s singular artistic outlook; here, otherworldly beauty and wonder coexist with a fundamental corporeality, outlining the fragile yet profound networks of life.

Untethered Journey is the latest collaboration between Jeffrey Deitch and Pace Gallery, who have sustained a cooperative relationship over the years, presenting joint institutional exhibitions and projects in support of their artists. The exhibition is also borne out of the long friendships between Smith, Deitch, and Glimcher. After meeting Smith in 1975, Deitch went on to support the artist-run shop A. More Store, which launched in 1981 under the leadership of Smith, and later included her sculpture Mother/Child (1993)—on view in this presentation—in Aperto ’93 at the 45th Venice Biennale. Glimcher has worked closely with Smith for decades, since Pace began representing her in 1994. This marks Smith’s sixteenth solo exhibition with the gallery.

“Jeffrey Deitch and I have long admired many of the same artists, and our galleries have worked together seamlessly to their benefit,” says Glimcher. “This is the first time that we are presenting an entire exhibition together, and the first time a collaboration of this sort is taking place in another gallery. Working with Jeffrey on this project has been pure joy.”