[Art Gallery Tour 28] Walk into Alexandria Smith solo exhibition | Stirrings of a Polymorphous Bloom

#AlexandriaSmith #WalaArt #Gagosian
Wala Art is taking you to a tour at Gagosian Hong Kong
Gagosian is pleased to announce Stirrings of a Polymorphous Bloom, American artist Alexandria Smith’s debut solo exhibition in Asia. Opening on November 16 in Hong Kong, the exhibition features new assemblage paintings and collage drawings that explore the protean nature of selfhood and identity.
The works in Stirrings of a Polymorphous Bloom envision cosmic environments inhabited by figures in flux. Smith’s practice is grounded in her exploratory drawings, represented in Hong Kong by works on paper housed in custom frames. From these, she develops boldly colored assemblage paintings that incorporate shapes made from painted wood and 3D-printed elements that rise from their surfaces and extend beyond their frames.
Smith’s new works focus on symbols of genesis, light, and growth, inspired by her interests in autobiography, fiction, and collective memory. Variously colored and ambiguously gendered, these hybrid figures emphasize features such as eyes, limbs, nipples, kneecaps, and nails. They stretch, divide, and multiply, embodying Smith’s multifaceted allegories of physical, spiritual, and emotional growth.
November 16, 2023-January 13, 2024
Artist：Alexandria Smith
Alexandria Smith’s art addresses issues of identity as informed by autobiography, fiction, myth, collective memory, and history. Combining figuration and abstraction, her works imagine hybrid figures comprised of limbs, eyes, breasts, and hair in distinctive configurations that embody physical, emotional, and metaphysical growth and transformation. Smith works across various mediums, making drawings with collage elements, paintings with sculptural assemblages, and immersive installations.
Smith was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1981. She earned her BFA in illustration from Syracuse University, New York; MA in art education from New York University; and MFA from Parsons School of Design, New School, New York. From 2017 through 2018 she served as co-organizer of the collective Black Women Artists for Black Lives. She lives and works in New York, and is assistant professor in painting and printmaking and director of undergraduate studies at the Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut.