Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. Shinique Smith: Menagerie

Sept 16th through Nov 19th, 2010.

altMOCA North Miami presents Shinique Smith’s first large-scale U.S. museum exhibition. In this exhibition, Smith will use MOCA’s flexible gallery space to explore new ways of working and installing her work. Part of MOCA’s Knight Exhibition Series, Shinique Smith: Menagerie will include installations, works on paper, and video from 2002 to the present.

Since bursting onto the scene in 2002, this young New York-based artist has produced works that combine complex social and cultural references with a broad array of art historical sources, including Abstract Expressionism, colorfield painting, minimal sculpture and Japanese Calligraphy. Her sculpture and installations are composed of collections and accumulations of found objects and second-hand clothing, which she ties together to form minimal cubes or wraps into bulbous bundles. Urban life is suggested both in her sculptures as well as the graffiti-like gestures of her exuberant paintings.

Menagerie is an apt title for this assortment of paintings, drawings, videos, and three-dimensional work Smith has assembled to satisfy her own curiosity at this juncture of her career. Hardly any of these works have been shown together before and most now reside in collections far and wide. Although the selection represents a variety of family types – bales, totems, reclining figures, and calligraphic gesture – the juxtaposition emphasizes each work’s individuality and personality.

Shinique Smith was born in 1971 in Baltimore and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.  She received her BFA and MFA degrees from The Maryland Institute College of Art, and MAT from Tufts University & The School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

MOCA North Miami
770 NE 125th Street
North Miami, FL 33161
305.893.6211
www.mocanomi.org

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