Michael Smith (b. 1951 Chicago, IL, USA) graduated from Colorado College, CO, USA in 1973 with a degree in painting. Smith’s participation in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in the early 1970s formed the beginnings of an extensive network in New York’s creative community. The artist lives and works between New York, NY and Austin, TX, USA.
For forty years Smith has been producing performances, video works, large scale installations, commercial television, puppet shows, photos and drawings that have been shown in a variety of venues and contexts, including museums, galleries, cable television, nightclubs, children’s birthday parties and on the streets. Smith has been at the forefront of a generation of artists interested in crossing over and merging an art world context with popular culture. A prolific artist, Smith often collaborates with other artists, including Joshua White, Mike Kelley, Seth Price and William Wegman. Drawing on aspects and conventions of daily life and mass media, Smith creates witty and ironic works that speak to the trials and tribulations of everyday life as well as to our most human concerns.
In the late 1970s Smith conceived of two characters, who have since been featured in the majority of his works – “Mike,” a naïve, hapless but optimistic everyman, and “Baby Ikki,” a genderless, prelingual, easily-distracted infant. These consistent performance personas have developed and aged with the artist, over the course of many years. In Smith’s far reaching oeuvre, Mike has built a fallout shelter; had his own tv variety show; entered a disco dancing competition; starred in a music video; had a business that went bankrupt; and was an artist with a loft for sale, amongst other pursuits.
In 2017, as part of Münster Skulptur Projekte, Smith developed Not Quite Under_Ground – a fully operational tattoo studio, which was open to everyone but offered a significant discount to people over the age of 65. The idea was envisaged from his own observations of Münster and the increase in older tourists visiting the arts festival. In a promotional-travelogue-style video, Mike is with a group of senior citizens as they tour the city, eventually visiting the parlour to get tattoos. In true Mike fashion, he opts for an empty to-do list in a hard to reach place on his backside. The video embraces the tropes of cultural tourism, while slyly highlighting the drawbacks and ironies of being a tourist. Smith’s accompanying works on paper suggest potential tattoo designs ranging from the conceptual, humorous to the mischievous.
As with every project Smith develops, he starts the process with drawing. Smith states, ‘The drawing phase is the most fun and creative, a special window of opportunity. That’s the time I let myself go and not edit out ideas.’ [1] These works on paper detail the creative process and the hilarious and serious inner workings of the artist. The selected Not Quite_Undergrounddrawings include sample tattoo designs and funny, pondering thoughts about tattoos.
[1] Miller, J. (2000) Michael Smith.Grenoble: Magasin-Centre National d’Art Contemporain.