Kiki Smith: Prints, 1990-2006

March 12, 2025 – April 19, 2025

Footage of Kiki Smith from Art21 digital series Extended Play, Kiki Smith: Printmaking © Art21, Inc. 2002. Courtesy of Art21, Inc.

Mary Ryan Gallery is pleased to announce Kiki Smith: Prints, 1990-2006, an exhibition of prints by Kiki Smith. This is the gallery’s second solo exhibition of Smith’s prints. Themes recurring throughout this selection include Smith’s inventive approach to self portraiture, a deep interest in nature and animals, and etchings created at a monumental scale.

Kiki Smith: Prints, 1990–2006, installed at Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, 2025.

Untitled (Hair) is Smith’s first lithograph. Produced in 1990, this print uses imprints of the artist’s own hair, face, neck, and even a “Cher” wig, to create an almost-abstract composition infused with motion and dynamism. One of the first prints in which Smith used her own body as a part of the printmaking process, Untitled (Hair) demonstrates her inventive approach when tackling themes of the human body, natural world, and personhood. Both Kiki Smith 1993 and Untitled (Hair) are unexpected approaches to self portraiture, expanding what the genre can encompass.

Smith appreciates the detail and crisp lines that she is able to achieve with etching, which dovetails well with her chosen subject matter. She says, “I started drawing animals because I like to draw hair. I realized how similar we are to birds or other mammals … How the hair and skin move on a face is the same as how hair patterns itself on an animal’s body.”

For the massive print Pool of Tears 2, Smith was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s drawings for his own manuscript Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (the published book contained illustrations by Sir John Tenniel), as well as encyclopedia images of animals and birds. In this scene from the book, Alice has been shrunken down and has fallen into a pool of her own tears. Smith used the largest etching plate that the studio, Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), could accommodate – in fact, the plate was so large that she sometimes had to sit on it as she worked.

Come Away From Her (After Lewis Carroll), 2003

Aquatint, drypoint, etching, and sanding with watercolor on mould-made En Tout Cas paper

Paper Dimensions: 50 5/8 x 73 3/4 inches (128.6 x 187.3 cm)

Framed Dimensions: 54 1/4 x 77 3/8 inches (137.8 x 196.5 cm)

Edition of 28

Kiki Smith 1993 is a self portrait by way of the digestive system, the full length of which is depicted here. Taking a unique approach, Smith has turned the body inside out to focus on the interior organs. Master printer Craig Zammiello remembers that Smith wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the paper and asked the ULAE team to wet the sheets down, a radical idea considering that the edition was already done: “Once these beautiful flat sheets were all finished, we just spritzed them down with a little pump sprayer and they curled and wrinkled and bubbled and that gives the prints that little bit of life that [Smith] was after.”

Kiki Smith at the opening reception of Portraits, Celestial Bodies, and Fairy Tales, Mary Ryan Gallery, 2017

Mary Ryan Gallery has placed Smith’s work in museums including the Albertina Museum, Austria; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; Chazen Museum of Art, WI; The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, VA; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, NY; Hood Museum of Art, NH; Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, AL; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; National Gallery of Art, DC; Princeton University Art Museum, NJ; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; and the Yale University Art Gallery, CT.