Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Michael E. Smith at Michael Benevento


(link)

"Blood is sticky, often surprising people newfound to emergencies who encounter only bodies at pains to remind them of clean superficial images, but you can cut off your hands and glue them to your shoes." Bodily violence, its threat (a body to become goo as any other) is implicit to a work that treats materials as categorically promiscuous (surreal), e.g. if you can put Mario in the gallery sky or ocean's puffer fish under the warbled blue of summer tables, inflate them like footballs with whale ears, aren't you as wiling to place skulls at your knees. The disregard for the categorical order is like gore, crushing bodies.



See too: Michael E. Smith at Sculpture Center, Michael E. Smith at Zero, Michael E. Smith at Lulu, Michael E. Smith at Susanne HilberryTony Conrad's Glass,