Michael Smith

In Michael Smith’s exhibition, at Greene Naftali in New York, “Excuse me!?!...I’m looking for the Fountain of Youth” his two personas, Mike and Baby Ikki, continue to highligh the deepest, tragicomic contradictions, of the American mass culture.

Michael Smith, KidZania, Experience No.2: Petrol, 2015
Mike may look like he’s one step from retiring but despite the passing years he has lost none of his grit, his exquisite sense of humour or, more importantly, his love lf life. Mike is the alter ego of Michael Smith, a New York artist who gave him body and mind in 1984, just as America was about to elect Ronald Reagan for his second term.
“Morning in America” was one of the campaign’s TV commercials that earned the President his majority vote, a montage of reassuring and optimistic images illustrating the improvements in the US economy. It showed the busy mornings of a working country and stressed a re-found sense of tranquillity in the big smiles of newly married couples and pensioners who sleep easy.
Michael Smith Fountain of Youth State Park, Journey No. 1: Contemplation of the Future, 2012
Top: Michael Smith, KidZania, Experience No.2: Petrol, 2015. C-print 22 1/4 x 33 1/2 inches (56.5 x 85.1 cm). Above: Michael Smith, Fountain of Youth State Park, Journey No. 1: Contemplation of the Future, 2012. C-print 22 1/4 x 33 1/2 inches (56.5 x 85.1 cm). Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
Mike was born into this media fabric influenced by television and its ability to egg people on. He rides the mainstream culture and personifies the stereotype of the American showman with clumsy and comical naivety. Michael Smith – who is the opposite of Mike – stepped into his shoes back then and continues to expose him to the crazy risks and adventures America is capable of, sometimes interchanging him with a second friendly character. Baby Ikki was born long before Mike (Baby Ikki’s first public performance was in New York in 1978) but he is much younger than Mike, dresses like a baby, is only just crawling and is still in nappies.
Michael Smith, Fountain of Youth State Park, Journey No. 1: Map, 2012
Michael Smith, Fountain of Youth State Park, Journey No. 1: Map, 2012. C-print 22 1/2 x 32 1/2 inches (57.2 x 86.6 cm). Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
For more than 35 years, Michael Smith has used these two personas to conduct a reflection on his home country, highlighting its deepest, tragicomic contradictions, its most colourful aberrations and the excesses of omnipotence sometimes seen in the American mass culture and, in parallel, the art world.
Michael Smith Excuse me!?!...I’m looking for the “Fountain of Youth,”: A Ballet in Three Acts, 2015
Michael Smith, Excuse me!?!...I’m looking for the “Fountain of Youth,”: A Ballet in Three Acts, 2015 (still). Video, 20:27. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
In Michael Smith’s New York solo, Mike is older and more tired but has great fun searching for his youth. With this drive, he retains the charm of someone who has not lost a sense of life or, indeed, a sense of art. The Michael Smith exhibition is a haven featuring a delightful but also somewhat troubling atmosphere, where visitors breathe in more freshness than creative retirement fatigue. Yet again, all is manifested through Mike and Baby Ikki, the stars of a new film, a photographic series, drawings, rugs and an installation occupying the central part of the both physical and narrative route.
Michael Smith, Excuse me!?!...I’m looking for the “Fountain of Youth,”: A Ballet in Three Acts, 2015
Michael Smith, Excuse me!?!...I’m looking for the “Fountain of Youth,”: A Ballet in Three Acts, 2015 (still) Video 20:27. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
Excuse me!?!...I'm looking for the "Fountain of Youth”  is a real place and the title of the exhibition that punctuates Mike’s time (or that of Michael). A stage on the other side of a transparent curtain onto which a timeline of dates is projected: from 1951, the year Michael Smith was born, to the present day; a mirror ball revolving on the ceiling on the other side of the curtain simulates the rhythm of life (Timeline, 2015) in its mirrored reflections. The exhibition also features a faux-mediaeval foyer complete with Sudoku-patterned pennons and monitors reproducing mini-clips of Mike engaged in absent-minded actions: looking in his pocket for his watch or his glass case and the right way up of a map of the American continent.
Michael Smith, Excuse me!?!...I’m looking for the “Fountain of Youth,”: installation
Michael Smith, Excuse me!?!...I’m looking for the “Fountain of Youth,”: Installation, 2015. 12 screen printed cotton pennants, 6 channel video (looped). Hand blown glass bottle, wood, CO2 tank, speakers Haute lisse, hand woven tapestry, 100% wool. Variable. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
Smith has also created a new film with the same title as the solo exhibition, yet another permutation of the fountain of youth, a dance piece choreographed by Stephen Mills and executed by Ballet Austin to music by Mayo Thomson. The story is “danced” around a fountain-water cooler, with the young dancers representing the beginning and good old Mike the end. Baby Ikki, the young-old man, is midway between the two. They all meet around the fountain to fill up on youth in a time that is eternally stopped in the Middle Ages.
Michael Smith, Excuse me!?!...I’m looking for the “Fountain of Youth,”: Installation, 2015, detail
Michael Smith, Excuse me!?!...I’m looking for the “Fountain of Youth,”: Installation, 2015, detail. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Smith’s insatiable instinct for contrived popular constructions has prompted him to experiment for the first time with the ballet formula and once again venture into the American landscape in search of ethnographic expedients. The first journey takes Mike to Florida and in Fountain of Youth archaeology park, immortalised in a number of photographs. Everything was then born out of this and the story is reproduced in fragments drawn on paper by Michael Smith and on the sewn rugs that serve as a backdrop to the whole exhibition.

For the second trip, again recorded in a photographic series, Mike goes to KidZania, another incredible theme park in Mexico. This is an educational format subsequently exported around the world in which children play at becoming adults and doing their jobs.

“Some people are born to win, some people are born to die” was the refrain of Go For Mike (Go for Mike, film, 1984). Mike is a loser who enthusiastically embraces life. Michael, the real one, is always a winner.

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