Also this issue:

The Right Hand Giveth...
Richard Price talks about his new novel, Samaritan, and the selfish side of altruism.
-Interview by Frank Halperin

Fly South for Winterthur
A Delaware estate presents a unique display of Mexican art.
-Robin Rice

Flipping the Bird
-Lori Hill

Nikki Giovanni
-Elisa Ludwig

A Plantsman in Asia: 1979-1999
-Lori Hill

Seussical: The Musical
-Jesse Delaney

Artsbeat
-Debra Auspitz

January 9-15, 2003

art

Domestic Bliss

Kiki Smith, <i>Owl and Pussycat </i>(2002), 24

inches by 12 inches by 2 inches, pigment on cotton

sateen with Liberty print fabrics.

Kiki Smith, Owl and Pussycat (2002), 24 inches by 12 inches by 2 inches, pigment on cotton sateen with Liberty print fabrics.

by Susan Hagen

New York artist Kiki Smith has always been interested in the strangeness of ordinary things. Her sculptural work has, for many years, addressed the disconcerting and visceral aspects of the human body. Smith's most recent work has evidence of her continued interest in the body, but she also incorporates the broader theme of nature. In a series of multiples of functional objects inspired by the human body, animals and plants, Smith explores the convergence of these sources with the domestic environment. Most of the pieces in the show were manufactured in editions of 16 to 150 and were produced in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop, Carpe Diem, Pace Editions, the Mattress Factory, etc. In this installation, Smith has combined these manufactured items with antique furniture into a series of evocative tableaux.

This process, with parallels in folklore, fairy tales and nursery rhymes, has allowed her to probe the dark side of human experience within the natural world. In some pieces, Smith uses language games to create new fables. Sitting on a bedside table, Finger Bowl (1995) is a large and lumpy bowl, made of cast silver with unpolished grooves and lumps like a child's clay project, and magically filled with dozens of brightly polished three-dimensional fingers on the inside. Other pieces have unpredictable switches or substitutions of elements. The piggy bank is reinterpreted as a new species in Lamb Bank (2002), made of porcelain with a neat slot in its back. Similarly, a tall chest of drawers has one drawer filled with a treasure trove of unusual jewelry, including a remarkable pair of oversized earrings. This pair of cast silver human tongues, inset with red gems, seems to capture a magic connection between the senses of taste and hearing, and hint at some untold parable.

In other pieces, Smith recreates a more or less realistic image but invests it with a new purpose or context. Yolk (2) (1999), made of solid worked glass, is an uncanny duplication of the brilliant color and the sagging spherical form of a real yolk, and here it functions as a paperweight. Eight life-size bronze mushrooms, in Mushrooms (1999), are transformed, as if bewitched, into a row of coat hooks attached to the wall of the gallery just above my head. Owl and Pussycat (2002), a printed and stuffed fabric flip doll made by Smith at the Fabric Workshop, is displayed sitting in a chair. Only one face of the cat and owl at opposite ends of the doll is visible at a time, while the other end is covered with a custom-printed flowered skirt, an ironic twist on the nursery rhyme that allows only one of the romantic pair to be present at a given time.

The installation also contains a few nonfunctional sculptural pieces that show enchantment happening. On the floor under a child's chair, the hybrid Octopuss (1998) lies in wait. Made of bronze with a dark brown patina, a spiraling tentacle emerges from a newborn kitten's upper body. It has a squashed face and its suckers are smooth and shiny bronze. Like a fairy-tale creature, it seems both vulnerable and menacing. Six cast bronze birds with inset emerald eyes lie in a row on a tabletop. These birds are mysteriously unanimated, compact and stiff, as if spellbound. Small Silver Animals (2002), an arrangement of miniature creatures that are only about 1/4- to 1/2-inch tall, stands on a table (interestingly, in the huge shadow of Finger Bowl). It consists of a group of 10 very delicate and fragile prey and predators that reveals the shockingly small scale of living things within the scary vastness of the universe. Smith imparts a thoughtful sadness to this arrangement, as well as many of her other domestic dioramas. Still, in a world where tails can be suddenly cut off by carving knives (or worse), the little pieces of mystery and beauty in this installation of domestic objects is most fortuitous.

Kiki Smith: Homework, through Jan. 18, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1315 Cherry St., 215-568-1111