Kiki Smith’s “Lodestar” continues at the Pace Gallery in Chelsea through June 19 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
LODESTAR
The Pace Gallery
545 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through June 19
Admission: free
www.thepacegallery.com
“Lodestar” slideshow
German-born American artist Kiki Smith has been examining nature, the human body, and, particularly, the role of women in art and society for more than three decades, from her days as a member of the Colab group in the late 1970s through to today, as seen in two strong, powerful shows currently on view in Chelsea and Brooklyn. Inspired by Prudence Punderson’s lovely late-eighteenth-century silk needlepoint “The First, Second, and Last Scene of Mortality,” which depicts three stages of a woman’s life, Smith has created a pair of site-specific installations that center on the life cycle of women from birth to death, a compelling celebration of creative inspiration and innate spirituality. At the Pace Gallery in Chelsea, “Lodestar” consists of nearly thirty hand-painted mouth-blown stained-glass panels that tell an abstract narrative of pilgrimage. Smith collaborated with Munich glass atelier Mayer’sche Hofkunstanstalt GmbH-Mayer and Bill Katz, who designed the panels as well as three white benches where people can sit and take in the wonder of it all. Smith’s line drawings are spectacular, particularly one in which a baby’s beautiful head is just entering the world. Smith incorporates such symbols as lightbulbs, birds, and chairs as women proceed from life to death in dramatic opaque panels that can be seen from both sides, as if the past is always present. The title, “Lodestar,” evokes the guiding North Star as well as the word “motherlode,” paying homage to femininity.
Kiki Smith’s “Sojourn” runs at the Brooklyn Museum through September 12 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
SOJOURN
Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway
Wednesday – Sunday through September 12
Suggested contribution: $10 (free first Saturday of the month after 5:00)
718-638-5000
www.brooklynmuseum.org
“Sojourn” slideshow
A related exhibition, “Sojourn,” continues the tale at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Winding around Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party,” the site-specific installation begins with “Field,” a bronze sculpture of a woman sitting on a chair, holding up her hand as if telling the viewer to proceed at their own risk. Divided into small roomlike segments, “Sojourn” features lifesize bronze sculptures, pencil and ink drawings on fragile Nepal paper, hanging lightbulbs and aluminum constructions, and even a wooden casket. The works feature such titles as “Messenger,” “Visitation,” “Annunciation,” “The Leaving,” and “I put aside myself that there was room enough to enter,” with several drawings the same as those seen at the Pace Gallery. In addition, Smith has added oil paintings, an embroidery, a projected video, and haunting, ghostlike papier-mâché figures to two rooms and the staircase of the Major Henry Trippe House, part of the museum’s outstanding period rooms in the Decorative Arts Galleries, once again evoking the past alongside the present. Taken together, “Lodestar” and “Sojourn” mark a major step forward in the career of one of America’s most important artists, a must-see pilgrimage well worth the journey.