Patti Smith: Wing
““I am not a photographer, yet taking pictures has given me a sense of unity and personal satisfaction. They are relics of my life. Souvenirs of my wandering. All that I have learned concerning light and composition is contained within them.” — Patti Smith, Land 250, Paris
Wing is an exhibition of photographs by musician, poet, and visual artist Patti Smith. The show bears witness to Smith’s growing inspiration by artistic movements she discovered during her numerous travels to Mexico. Exhibited in the same space as Diego Rivera’s 1931 fresco, The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City, it privileges a direct dialogue between Smith’s imagery and the subject of an intimate regard.
Smith continues her reflection on the act of artistic creation and the alchemy that unites artists together across time and space by referring to a brotherhood of mental bonds that keeps ideas alive. In this way, the artist expresses her kinship and attachment to Mexico, and its prospering artistic community—a feeling demonstrated during her performances and visits to Mexico over the years.
During these trips, Smith has composed and dedicated poetry to figures such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Isamu Noguchi, Roberto Bolaño, and the habitués of the Café La Habana, which included Octavio Paz and Che Guevara. Each journey continues the discovery into the universe of her luminaries while visiting their studios and homes, admiring their oeuvre, and returning to the places they frequented.
Wing is the title of one such poem in which Smith speaks about freedom—a quality she treasures in the work of these artists. The title also alludes to the longing to travel to distant places in search of beauty. For this exhibition, a grouping of silver gelatin prints intimately depicts small, everyday objects and places, while the portrayal of these objects reveals the admiration and reverence Smith has for their original owners. Kahlo’s corset, Rivera’s bed, and Bolaño’s chair represent not only memories of her encounters with their owners across time and space, but also the inspiration these personalities have upon the author. In between these objects belonging to her admired subjects, the viewer witnesses moments of intimacy and a deep sense of observation for loved ones and lifelong friends. Altogether, the photographs evoke a journey across the landscape of Smith’s mind, as she portrays the many inhabitants of her artistic heritage.
Patti Smith: Wing is co-presented with kurimanzutto, Mexico City and New York in conjunction with FOG Design+Art at Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture.
About Patti Smith
Patti Smith (born 1946, Chicago) began as a visual artist and has been making drawings and taking photographs since the late 1960s. In recent years, her practice has expanded to include installation, such as Camera Solo, a survey of her photographs, organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (2011), which traveled to Detroit Institute of Arts (2012) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (2013).
In 2008, Smith was the subject of Patti Smith, Land 250 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, and Written Portrait – Patti Smith at Artium Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith, a three hundred-work retrospective, was organized by The Andy Warhol Museum in 2002 and traveled to numerous venues including the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and the Museum Boijsman Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Her work has also been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Eki, Kyoto; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Triennale di Milano, Milan; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels and the Pompidou Center in Paris.
Just Kids, a memoir of Smith’s relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe during the late sixties and seventies in New York, won her the 2010 National Book Award. Her 1975 album Horses, established her as one of most original and important musicians of her generation and has been followed by ten studio albums, including Radio Ethiopia; Easter; Dream of Life; Gone Again, Trampin’, and Banga, her latest. She continues to perform throughout the world and in 2007 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In July of 2005, she was presented with the prestigious insignia of Commander of the Order of the Arts and Letters, France’s highest cultural honor.
About kurimanzutto
In 1999, Mónica Manzutto and José Kuri were approached by Gabriel Orozco with the idea of opening a gallery that would represent the new generation of artists in Mexico to which he belonged. kurimanzutto’s primary aim was to promote the careers of these artists and adapt to the varied and experimental projects it undertook. Initially a nomadic enterprise, its projects occupied disparate spaces across the urban landscape of Mexico City, and became the core of the first generation of its artists’ practice. In time, a warehouse space became available to the artists and kurimanzutto for different ventures that required both an arena of freedom and unbound space. In 2008, kurimanzutto opened a permanent gallery space in Mexico City, yet the gallery continues to search for places outside the white-cube to carry forward its original vision. 2018 marks the gallery’s exploration of new regions with the opening of a project space in New York.
For more information on kurimanzutto please visit kurimanzutto.com
or on Instagram: @kurimanzutto.
General Information
The Diego Rivera Gallery at San Francisco Art Institute is free and open to the public every day, 9 AM – 7 PM. Please note: The gallery will be closed for a private event starting at noon on Thursday, January 17.
IMAGE: Frida Kahlo’s crutches, Casa Azul, Coyoacán, Patti Smith, 2012. Gelatin silver print, 8×10 in, Edition 2/10. Image courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City.
