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.
Excuse Me!?!…I’m looking for the “Fountain of Youth” (2015) is a video of Smith’s debut ballet, featuring Mike and Baby Ikki in an elaborate narrative told through dance. Choreographed by Stephen Mills, with music by Mayo Thompson, the ballet odyssey follows Mike through an office setting, the surreal middle ages and finally through a security check in his search for the elixir of eternal youth. The ballet juxtaposes Mike’s lumbering technique with elegant apprentices from Ballet Austin, TX, USA.
The work has previously been shown in the BMW Tate Live: Performance Room Series, livestreamed in 2015 from the Tate Modern, London, UK.
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 Excuse Me!?!...I’m looking for the “Fountain of Youth” drawings include storyboards, directions, costumes, characters and props.
[1] Miller, J. (2000) Michael Smith.Grenoble: Magasin-Centre National d’Art Contemporain.