Years in the making, Kiki Smith's exhibition at Galleria Lorcan O’Neill presents new bodies of work, including some of the most complex bronze sculptures of the artist's career.

Inspired by the archaic cultures of the Mediterranean, the show features figures of animals, hybrid creatures, and visualizations of the cosmos. A number of these works were particularly influenced by the myths of the Greek islands, where Smith had a solo show at the Deste Foundation on Hydra in 2019.

Over the past three decades Smith has explored the philosophical, social and spiritual aspects of human existence through her profound and meditative works. Her recurrent theme has been the body, conceived as a receptacle for knowledge and storytelling. In the 1990s the artist reached a turning point when she started to incorporate animals and narrative tropes from classical mythology and folk tales in her work.

Entering the gallery, the visitor is greeted by two bronze sculptures of rearing goats.

On the wall behind them, Siren and Enchantment, two mermaids cast as sheets of bronze with drawn lines in relief, hover between flatness and three-dimensionality.

The figures are, in part, self-portraits: both have Smith’s face and flowing hair, but their furry, breasted torsos have goat forelegs, and their bottom halves have fish tails. Almost as if they were collaged together from separate stories, they relate to different elements: sky, earth, sea.

From head to tail, each sculpture features an assortment of raised stars which map the constellation of Capricorn, zodiac sign under which Smith herself was born.

The observation and interpretation of stars through astronomy and astrology also recur in Smith's new body of abstract paintings visualizing cosmic energies, and in Sungrazer IV, the bronze sculpture of a couple of stars.

The exhibition continues with several sculptures in bronze, part of Smith's personal bestiary: cats, eagles, owls. Animals play an essential role in the entire exhibition. At the intersection between humans and the natural world, they carry symbolic meanings and embody human values, while keeping a strong bond to nature and its constant renewal.