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MICHAEL E. SMITH

Biography

To make his sculptures, Michael E. Smith extracts recognizable objects from the constant cycle of consumption and production that drives our modern world. Materials including clothing, plastics, machinery, as well those derived from the natural world, are stripped of their intended purpose, and reassembled to create new, sculptural forms, highlighting that while these are often discarded, they never fully disappear. Organized through a series of binaries, such as natural versus the artificial, the human versus the technological, or life versus death, Smith seeks to coax both the individual histories of his objects, as well as the larger, often invisible systems they inhabit. Paring down his installations to an extreme, Smith invites emptiness to shape his works as well, and the uneasy tension it brings with it, from order and harmony, to disarray and discord.

Michael E. Smith lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions that include: Kunst Museum Winterthur, Winterthur, 2024, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2023, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, 2021, Secession, Vienna, 2020, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, 2018, SMAK, Ghent, 2017, Kunstverein Hannover, 2015, De Appel, Amsterdam, 2015, Sculpture Center, Queens, 2015, La Triennale di Milano, Milan, 2014, Power Station, Dallas, 2014, CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, 2013 and Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, 2011, among others. Smith's work was included in May You Live in Interesting Times, the 58th Venice Biennale, and additionally, he participated in Quiet as It’s Kept, the 2022 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, as well as the 2012 edition of the Whitney Biennial. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, SFMoMA, San Francisco, MCA Chicago, SMAK, Ghent, and Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany, among others.

 

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