ART-PRESENTATION: Michael E. Smith-ॐ
Michael E. Smith uses cast-offs, waste and other remnants of our globalised consumer society. In his studio, the artist generates material sketches out of his finds, thereby testing their potential to hold meaning. It is only when installing these sketches for an exhibition that he develops the objects into their final form.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Kunsthalle Basel Archive
Michael E. Smith’s solo exhibition “ॐ” is on presentation at Kunsthalle Basel. The artist animates and transforms everyday objects through careful manipulations and arrangements. Subtle juxtapositions, removals, misuses, and degradations render even the most common things unfamiliar. Both untitled, two kinetic sculptures create haunting effects through their use of intangible materials. A fog machine releases a cloud into a crumpled black sweatshirt, momentarily bringing it to life before the mist disperses into the room. In the other work, a laser pointer shoots a pulsing beam along the wall, intersecting with a vintage taxidermy macaw. The devices that power the light and smoke within Smith’s sculptures are defined through their connection to empty vessels that once housed, or have the potential to house, a living entity. Smith’s sculptures extend from the parameters of the object itself and into the atmosphere of the space. Michael E. Smith’s hometown of Detroit has become a powerful metaphor for the decline of economic progress in the West. As a prototypical ruin of a traumatised American soul, this city is emblematic of the dwindling of its working population as a result of the demise of its automobile and steel industries. This theme has in the meantime almost become a cliché, but it gained a new urgency at the time of the recent US elections, when the republican candidate and present president Donald Trump exploited these issues in an overly aggressive and one-dimensional manner. On the one hand, Michael E. Smith clearly tries to avoid his work being read in relation to a rotten American dream with all its popular culture excesses, from computer games through comic culture to science fiction; on the other hand he repeatedly confirms the enormous influence the social aesthetics and politics of his own life and hometown have had on his artistic practice. It is important to emphasise here that Detroit should not be associated only with decline, but is also a rich source of cultural resistance, freedom and alternatives.
Info: Kunsthalle Basel, Steinenberg 7, Basel, Duration: 2/3-21/5/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-20:30, Sat-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.kunsthallebasel.ch
