At a time when Western societies overstep the limits of their growth and should switch from expansion to self-preservation, Michael E. Smith’s oeuvre counters the ecological and economic disaster of our era with a materialism of basic needs. Smith has effaced humans from his art and replaced them with a physiology and psychology of things. His objects look like physical reconstructions of emotional vulnerability and violation; his exhibitions, like an archaeology of humanity. The objects produced are taken out of use. They are “abandoned” in empty spaces—haunting them rather than passively occupying them. Up to the point that, like asserted by Michael E. Smith himself, a thing can be more human than a human being.
Setting down a handful of newly works site-specifically produced in the CAPC’s exhibition rooms, Michael E. Smith came up with a score of light and darkness, solid and void, violence and softness, noise and silence that explores today’s viability of art. The exhibition will be reinterpretated at La Triennale di Milano, where it will be on view in March 2014.
Exhibition curator: Alexis Vaillant, Chief Curator, CAPC Contemporary Art Museum Bordeaux
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