Kiki Smith review in Artforum

Kiki Smith - Fortune, 2014
Jacquard tapestry with hand painting - 116 x 78 in. Edition of 10
Kiki Smith's show "Wonder" at Pace Gallery has been drawing critical raves, and snapshots of work from the show are popping up all over Twitter.

In particular, Smith's tapestry editions (published by Magnolia Editions) have been receiving favorable attention. Artforum reviewer Paige Bradley selected Smith's "Wonder" show for the magazine's Picks section, writing:

“Wonder,” the title of Kiki Smith’s latest New York exhibition, suitably describes both the excitement in first encountering Smith’s garden of earthly delights and an astonished curiosity at their craft-intensive processes. [...]

Three nearly ten-foot-long tapestries, all 2014, make the grandest gesture in the exhibition. Portraying almost Edenic scenes of a nude girl and a fawn, as in Congregation, or spiderwebs flecked with gold and silver leaf among shooting plants in Spinners, the medium is dusted off and made contemporary by virtue of the vibrantly abstract, cut-up collage borders. Translated into a crisply precise (and a forerunner of digital technology) Jacquard weave, they reflect the heterogeneous textures of Smith’s drawings and set these extraordinary works apart from any mere nostalgia or worship of antiquated forms.

"Wonder" is on view through March 29th at Pace's 510 West 25th Street location. For more information, please visit the Pace Gallery website. To read more about the process behind Smith's tapestries, check out this interview with the Denton Record-Chronicle.

More art by Kiki Smith at Magnolia Editions

Kiki Smith and Chuck Close at Pace Gallery

Fortune (2014), a new tapestry edition by Kiki Smith published by Magnolia Editions and currently on view at Pace Gallery.
Four new tapestry editions by Kiki Smith will make their debut as part of "Kiki Smith: Wonder," opening at Pace Gallery at 510 West 25th Street in New York this Friday, February 28, 2014. The exhibition, says the gallery, "presents the artist’s investigation of the natural and spiritual worlds through works made of aluminum, bronze, fine silver, textile, stained and hand-blown antique glass, and paint."

Spinners (2014), a new tapestry edition by Kiki Smith published by Magnolia Editions and currently on view at Pace Gallery.

Detail from Spinners (2014)
Several works in the show refer to the transition from winter to spring via the motif of hoarfrost, the natural crystallization of water vapor, which appears throughout "Wonder" in various forms ranging from silver and stainless steel sculptures (up to 13 feet in size!) to the eponymous tapestry edition Hoarfrost.

The artist was still putting the finishing touches on her new tapestries by hand as the show was being installed; those lucky enough to attend the opening were the first to see these editions.

Kiki Smith adds hand-painted details to tapestries at Pace Gallery; photo by Donald Farnsworth.

Kiki Smith adds hand-painted details to tapestries at Pace Gallery; photo by Donald Farnsworth.
"Kiki Smith: Wonder" is the artist’s first major New York gallery show in four years and marks the twentieth anniversary of Smith’s first solo exhibition at the Pace Gallery.

Congregation (2014), a new tapestry edition by Kiki Smith published by Magnolia Editions and currently on view at Pace Gallery.
Opening the same night and running concurrently (through March 29) at Pace's 534 West 25th Street location around the corner, "Chuck Close: Nudes 1967-2014" presents a survey of Close's Polaroids and daguerreotypes of friends and strangers in the buff, as well as the 10 by 21 foot Big Nude, a 1967 painting on loan from a private collection and never before exhibited publicly in New York.

For more details on both shows, please visit Pace Gallery's website.

More art by Kiki Smith at Magnolia Editions

More art by Chuck Close at Magnolia Editions